


Fugitive

by mindy_makru_tutu



Category: Bodyguard (TV 2018)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M, Flashbacks, Injury Recovery, Missing Scenes, No story of mine will ever be tagged David/Vicky (but I deal with that relationship), POV Alternating, Post-series fix-all, Skeleton plot (but don't look too hard), Slow Burn, The main point is - Julia lives, The wee Budds are in it (but I don't care that much about them - just so you know)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-06
Updated: 2019-04-01
Packaged: 2019-10-23 15:10:53
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 11
Words: 27,287
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17685845
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mindy_makru_tutu/pseuds/mindy_makru_tutu
Summary: She’s a fugitive trying so hard not to exist. He’s the lover trying so hard to forget.





	1. Prologue

She should’ve known better. Than to listen to her scheming ex-husband. Not to mention her witch of a mother. A dried up old crone she hadn’t had a consistent relationship with since she was shipped off to boarding school at the age of eight. What on earth had she been thinking? Taking their advice? Listening to the long list of allegations they presented to her?

In her own defence, she’d been heavily drugged. In shock. In fear of her life. Confused as to what that life could possibly look like now. She was black and blue and red and purple. Vulnerable and alone. She supposes the photograph Roger showed her of her trusted PPO and clandestine lover standing next to the Thornton Circus shooter was simply the last straw. Her eyes – much like the rest of her – hadn’t been working properly. Everything still looked ashy and overexposed. She remembers blinking at it several times. It took her a full minute to comprehend what it was she was seeing.

But there he was. David. Her David. Only not her David. Someone else’s David. Someone else’s husband, someone else’s father. Someone else’s army buddy. He had his arm slung around the other man’s shoulder. He was dressed in fatigues with his hair cropped close and a toothy grin on his face. Propped casually at his side was a tall, bulky rifle. A killing machine. Just like him. Just like her David.

The man beside him looked more subdued. There was sand in his hair and a small smile on his lips. But it didn’t reach his eyes. Nothing did anymore, she could tell. There was something wrong with those eyes, something missing from them, even back then. He’d yet to suffer the burns that would mar his face for the rest of his life. She remembers those burns, those eyes staring at the ceiling of the morgue. She’d wanted to view the body. She thought it might ease her anxiety, put a stop to the nightmares, prevent her hands from shaking every time she approached a car. Facing fears head-on was a long-time habit with her. She did things because she was afraid, not because she wasn’t. But this time her bravado proved unproductive.

Nothing had changed when the morgue attendant lifted the sheet. The woman took a few silent steps backwards, clasping her hands in front of her as if attending a funeral. David stood further back, just inside the door, arms stiff at his sides. He hadn’t shown any sign of grief or regret or apprehension. No feeling whatsoever. She’d never have guessed he knew the man. Possibly because she didn’t know him. Not as well as she’d thought she had. He hadn’t said a word when she joined him at the door. He just nodded and ushered her out, down the sterile, white corridor to the service elevator.

He touched her once they were inside. His fingers slid down the inside of her wrist to her hand. He squeezed her cold, trembling fingers in his warm, rough palm. “Let’s get you home, eh?”

She smiled gratefully. She knew he didn’t like taking these detours. David liked knowing where they were going, what was coming, what threats might arise. She’d assumed he’d resisted their visit to the morgue for the same reason. Not because it held the body of someone he once knew. Perhaps still knew. Was perhaps in active collusion with all along, without her ever suspecting.

That photo threw everything into doubt. Everything she thought she knew about her protector – or had instinctively inferred or wishfully imagined – was suddenly suspect. Just as Roger intended it to be. How he’d found out about their affair she’ll probably never know. He had his contacts just as she had hers. It would’ve been as easy as whispering in the ear of one of the officers stationed outside her rooms at The Blackwood. Though why she’d heeded the advice of her ex-husband she is yet to comprehend. But she did. And this is where it left her.

Julia glances around at the four walls and dated décor of her loathed limbo-land. She’s on the top floor of the building, removed from the world and all its sounds, all its bustle. Unlike her light and sophisticated flat, this place feels dark and airless, timelessly oppressive. The polished wooden cabinets and dusty floral prints remind her of her childhood, a time she never particularly desired to revisit. But her surroundings weren’t her choice. She could take nothing from her old life with her, nothing but what remained of her broken body, mind and heart.

She wheels herself to a solid oak dresser and gazes into its milky mirror. The piece seems immovable, utterly permanent in a way that she resents. Fears, even. Julia stares it down, hands intractable on the armrests of her wheelchair. She takes in her naked face, her yellowing bruises, her still bandaged body parts. Her injuries continue to heal. She persists with her rehab and follows the advice of her doctors, though she’s not sure what they’re all attempting to preserve. She’s neither dead nor alive. She’s no longer an important politician, a cabinet minister and minor celebrity. She’s not woman, wife or lover. She’s simply a patient, a victim, a has-been in hiding. A scorched and brittle shell staring at a picture of a boy who’d grow up to betray her. A fugitive still enthralled by the forbidden figure that incited her flight. 

_TBC...._


	2. Purification

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She’s a fugitive trying so hard not to exist. He’s the lover trying so hard to forget.

They haven’t had sex. They haven’t even kissed yet. She’ll touch him now, as she wouldn’t before. Brush his arm with her fingertips. Hug him goodbye, dismiss him with a brief pat on one shoulder. Once when they were strolling down a pier, the kids running ahead of them, Vicky let him sling an arm about her shoulders. It took a moment but her arm wrapped loose and low around his hips in response. It felt tentative, it felt strange. After so long, after everything – her affair and his. It’s what he’s wanted for so long but it doesn’t feel like it should, like he expected it to.

Most of their time together is spent out and about with the kids. They go to parks, beaches, movies. They take trains and go on rides. They eat holiday foods like pizza and popcorn and ice cream and chips. Their family life looks like one endless circus, all bright colours and flashing lights. At the end of each excursion, he drops his family back at the home he used to share with them but never ventures far past the vestibule. He drives home alone with the radio on and a window cracked.

He avoids the news, not that there’s any fear of her name being mentioned. The country has moved on – the government, the Home Office, the media. They mourned for an appropriate amount of time before promptly resuming their backbiting and scandalmongering. They all just got on with business as if Julia Montague never existed. And so did he, ostensibly. If anyone were to look, they would find no recordings of her voice stashed in his flat, no searches retrievable in his recent internet history. There were no newspaper clippings of her funeral, complete with an impervious portrait of her face. No mementos of The Blackwood and their brief but consuming liaison.

He thought about moving, finding a new flat. A clean slate. A fresh start. But there was no escaping what he’d done. Or hadn’t done. Hadn’t been able to prevent. His shrink keeps telling him that he needs to stop blaming himself for Julia Montague’s demise. David nods in compliance but says nothing. Because even if his head were shrunk for one quiet hour every damn day for the rest of his life, he knows he will carry her death with him until the moment he breathes his last breath.

The gym helps more than anything, more than talking ever could. Without his work, without someone to watch over, he has all this surplus energy, tension, attention. He expends it on weights, on the treadmill, in the pool. He gets into a rhythm with it. He ignores the television screens, suspended on brackets and broadcasting a seemingly endless series of breakfast shows and infomercials. He sticks earbuds in his ears and listens to lyric-less music. Music with a dead pulse, a consistent beat, an increasing drive. Treadmill first, then weights, then pool. Arm over arm, breath after breath. Reaching the pool’s bounds, he rolls, pushes off the slick tile and returns down its limited expanse. After twenty laps, he emerges anew. Fresh. Purified.

Almost.

As he swims, he tracks the black line at the bottom of the pool and thinks of her in her black one-piece, cutting through the water at The Blackwood. She was on the swim team all through high school and university. He didn’t get that from Google. He got that from her lips. He’d returned one night from The Blackwood’s state of the art facilities, hair still dripping and heart still pumping. He’d done a full hour and a half workout only to find her exactly where he’d left her, on the couch ensconced in official government documents. The wine bottle they’d started together was empty. She’d played with her glass, swirling the remaining liquid as she relayed her impressive stats.

“Butterfly,” she told him, rising from the cushions and downing the last of the Merlot, “was my best stroke.”

It made sense, he remembers thinking, that the most difficult yet most feminine stroke would be Julia Montague’s speciality. She’d sidled closer and he’d suppressed a smile. Rarely one to ask obliquely, he’d known exactly what she was angling for. He told her he’d check the area to see if it could be adequately secured and, if it could, then she could take a swim.

“Tomorrow night?” she asked, brows lifted.

He chuffed. “We’ll see.”

She wound her arms round his neck and kissed him, a glimmer of humour in her eye and a trace of manipulation in her tone. “You’re so good to me…” 

She’d abandoned her work and they’d made love, as they had almost every night of their stay at The Blackwood. Often more than once. He passes the place occasionally. Out of necessity, not intention. And once, he passed by her building and couldn’t help gazing up at its pale, imposing façade. He avoids going that way now. It’s not healthy behaviour. Julia Montague is gone. She no longer lives there. Or anywhere.

He is alive. His wife is alive. His kids. Vicky, Ella and Charlie are his future. They are what matter now. As do his colleagues, his principals, his job – if he can hold onto it. If he can find a way to put all those fractured pieces back into their rightful places, then maybe he’ll have some semblance of a life worth living. If they give him his job back, he’ll prove himself worthy of their trust, a committed and capable officer despite his disastrous failure as the Home Secretary’s bodyguard. If Vicky gives him the chance, he’ll prove himself a dedicated and loving father to their two children and any more they might have in the future. If she allows him back into their bed, he will touch her gently, treat her tenderly. He will ensure her happiness and she will cleanse his skin of the memory of Julia Montague.

For she remains the last woman he kissed. The last woman he touched. The last woman to take him into her bed and into her body. The memory of her body haunts him, her face and hips, her kisses and sighs. He still feels ghost-like touches of her on his skin, like a scent that can’t be eradicated. Part of him can’t wait for Vicky to re-stake her claim on him, to repossess his guilty arms and mouth and cock, to take them back from the greedy ghost of the late Home Secretary. Another part of him – a quiet and covert part – waits more patiently. It lives with her traces, it loves them. And dreads the moment he will have to relinquish all remaining traces of her forever.  
  


* * *

  
The pool is her favourite part of rehab. She’d always been called a wet blanket at school – a cold fish, an ice queen. She’d embraced such slurs, joining the swim team and collecting a cabinet full of medals and trophies. Gold, silver and bronze spheres that were all comfortingly cool to the touch.

She won’t be collecting gold any time soon. Her hip was shattered in the explosion. Her wrist fractured. And one leg broken in three places. The buoyancy of the water relieves her joints and bones of the weight of her battered body. And it cools the singed skin that still seems to smart. She feels constantly hot. She can’t stand things against her skin – bandages, blankets, clothes. In the pool, all that touches her body is the lycra of her plain black swimsuit and the cool, chlorinated water.

Her physio doesn’t crowd her, he knows she doesn’t like that. He’s figured out that the best way to get her to do what he wants her to do is to remain outside the pool, giving instructions while she works at her own pace in the water. When she asks him how long it will be before she can swim laps, he pauses and replies:

“We’re getting there.”

Then he hands her her robe, just like David did at The Blackwood. She hadn’t swum for years before that night. But there was something divine about the water at that hotel. It’s possible that having a lover for the first time in years had put her in a heightened erotic state. Because the cool blue water had felt like silk, stroking her limbs, her breasts, her belly with every movement. She’d found an almost blissful rhythm the moment her body penetrated the still surface. She lost track of time, never wanted to leave the water. Too soon for her liking, David had approached the edge to tap on his watch. She rose out of the water, folded her arms on the wet tile as her chest heaved with exertion.

“Five minutes, Ma’am.”

She smiled up at him and panted, “I can do at least as many laps in that time.”

He was on duty but he smiled back before returning to his place at the door. The space was dark and empty and cavernous, every swish echoing off the damp walls. The only way to secure it was if she swum after hours, late at night. But The Blackwood had only agreed to an extra half hour, at the end of which David stepped up with her robe. She climbed the ladder, dripping and energised and reluctant, and he threw it around her shoulders, drawing the collar up close to her chin.

“Thank you,” she said breathlessly.

“Welcome,” he answered, sneaking a quick kiss before escorting her to the exit.   

Her physio is nothing like David. He is blond and tanned and very gay. He seems to have absolutely no investment in her recovery. Which, in a way, she prefers. Being surrounded by ambivalent strangers is no more uncomfortable than being surrounded by untrustworthy adversaries. And “surrounded” would be an exaggeration. There’s her physio. A team of doctors to treat different parts of her. A constantly revolving door of nurses for days, nights, weekends and relief work. She has four tall security officers who all look the same. A lady with no English comes every two weeks to do her nails. And her mother calls once a week to chat for fifteen minutes. That’s the entire circle of her acquaintance.

She’s considered getting a pet. A cat perhaps. Just so there’s some semblance of warmth in her life, some true enactment of a relationship. She doesn’t. Probably because she has a vague sense of waiting. For something to happen, for the next stage of her life to begin. She can’t live like this forever, no one could. But she hadn’t considered that when she’d gone into hiding. Preservation had been her priority. And now she feels trapped in the life she preserved.

She still remembers the horror of the first time she was cognisant enough to log her various injuries, to question what exactly those doctors had given a second life to. The right side of her head had been shaved, sliced into then sown up again. Dried blood and puss stuck to the taut stitching. There were mottled, weeping burns on her neck, down her right hip and flank. An angry slash ripped at her torso. Every part of her four limbs that wasn’t bandaged was irreversibly bruised or burned or cut. Even now, her eyes remain sunken, her frame hunched. Her body seems to concave where it used to curve. She’s a patchwork doll fashioned by an army of disembodied hands rather than by her own desire or determination to live. 

In the end, it may well have been pride that made her run, vanity that dictated her fugitive state.  Anonymity and escape were preferable to presenting this female Frankenstein to the world. To the British parliament and public. To him. To David. What would he have said? What _could_ he have said? Theirs was a short-lived affair – precipitous and perilous. Such relationships were not built to last. Yet she’d offered to risk more than they already had – everything of hers along with everything of his. Just like a fool. A grasping, misguided, middle-aged fool. Throughout her career, she’d watched senior male colleagues fall for bright young women to the all too predictable detriment of their reputations and families. She’d rolled her eyes on hearing whispers of their weakness. She’d felt smugly superior that, as a woman of sense and resolve, her path would never be impeded by such ridiculously romantic, stupidly sexual impulses.

David’s response to her proposal had been reticent. Shocked, she’d thought, but moved. They had much to discuss. But they had time. They had the rest of their lives to work out the details, and she was very good with details. They were on the same page – or so she’d thought. Then, she’d thought that he wanted what she wanted just as much as she wanted it. But it’s possible, she thinks now, that he was simply biding his time, working out a tactful way to extricate himself before completing his plan of destruction. She wasn’t his future. He’d never wanted her to be. If anything, she represented his past. A past he wished to avenge. A past he wished to banish, not embrace.

Her physiotherapist helps pull her out of the pool, drops her robe about her shoulders then leaves her sitting on the edge, tracing the scars on her thigh with one finger. He turns his back, stuffing things into his bag as he talks in an upbeat way about their next session. Julia doesn’t listen. Her heart beats in her ears, her feet swish in the pool, her gaze doesn’t lift from the scarring she now lives with. She’s thinking about all those tabloids that called her a heartless, unnatural monster. If only they could see her now in all her deserved disfigurement. She almost smiles at the thought, but it dies on her lips. Because no one can see her now. No one does.

She’s a woman who doesn’t exist.

_TBC..._


	3. Spectre

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She’s a fugitive trying so hard not to exist. He’s the lover trying so hard to forget.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to those who have read and commented so far, both my tumblr friends who have come across and those who've clicked on a fic by an author unknown in this community. I'm aware that this story really requires reading as so far it's quite character-driven and interior (to me, this reflects the tone of the show). So thank you for sticking with it, I can promise you some action real soon :)

The disciplinary inquiry clears him but only on the understanding that certain recommendations be heeded. He must continue therapy, an hour every week without fail. He can’t return full-time and, when he does, he must ride a desk for a discreet period determined by his commanding officer. Once cleared for active duty, he will initially be part of someone else’s team, not leading his own. David can’t muster the energy to be pissed about any of these provisos. He’s just happy to be working again, moving forward.

He behaves himself during his time on probation and is quickly released from the confines of his desk. His first week back on the job, he encounters some of Julia’s former colleagues. Mike Travis still occupies her position as Home Secretary. Following his resignation, John Vosler slid easily into another high-powered position. Standing to one side with his hands clasped in front of him, David watches as Travis, Julia’s ex-husband and the former PM present to the press as a tight bundle of heartily shaken hands and successful, trustworthy smiles. The sight of them in the flesh startles him internally but none acknowledge his presence. It’s a familiar feeling. He’s used to being an invisible man. It’s what he’s good at, used to. Or he was until Julia came along and saw him, exposed him, made him matter. He’s back to not mattering and it’s oddly comforting.

He wakes, works, works out, sleeps. He sees his kids, goes to therapy and smiles at his wife in a way that tells her that he’s alright now, everything’s going to be alright now. Because all the bad stuff has been banished. It’s a small life, just varied enough for him to hold the disparate pieces together. At the end of each day, he goes to bed and he sleeps, something that never used to happen before. His trauma never really manifested in nightmares. He suffered from sleeplessness more than anything else. His mind just wouldn’t stop, his body couldn’t relax. He spent years running on restless snatches of sleep but now he gets five, six, seven hours every night. Now, he sleeps.

His therapist tells him it’s a positive sign, a healthy indication that his system is finally calming down. So he thinks it’s probably alright that he dreams of her. If it allows him to rest, it must be permissible. Not that he tells his shrink that the reason his conscious mind switches off so willingly and his weary body lets go so easily is that they collectively believe they’re going to see Julia Montague again. Talk to her. Touch her.

It’s not always sex. Sometimes it’s just vague images of her, of escorting her around the city. It’s memories all jumbled up. They become so jumbled by his unconscious that he can’t separate fiction from reality. Did they really fuck in the shower until her cries echoed off the tiles or was that just a dream? Did she really corner him in a bathroom, slam him against the nearest hard surface and coax his stunned mouth into kissing her back? Or did he invent that whole scene? How much of it was real and how much unreliable memory, wishful thinking or grief-stricken elaboration?

There’s one memory he knows is real and cannot shake, as much as he’d like to. He’d been there when her first nightmare struck following the Thornton Circus attack. Sleeping in tents or barracks alongside fellow soldiers, his ear became specially attuned to the low moans and held breaths of tormented souls attempting to escape their own psyches. There was a particular rustle the sheets made in that futile struggle to regain conscious control. Julia woke fairly easily, returned to herself relatively quickly. He was able to comfort her, calm her and, in his arms, she slept the rest of the night undisturbed.

He was not so lucky.

He stared at the ceiling until the sun rose, Andy’s words echoing in his mind. His friend had wanted Julia Montague to receive a taste of their trauma, the trauma of millions. And he’d succeeded. She was traumatised. She was almost preternaturally accomplished at masking the fact but he saw it during their intimate, night-time hours. When she was no longer on display, when she no longer needed to embody the impermeable security of their formidable nation, he alone saw her exhaustion, her fragility. When she no longer had to be a pillar, she was a person. One crumbling round the edges. And once so full of rage and spite and blame, David found his revenge fantasies turning into fantasies of contrition, of redemption, of saviour.

Staring at the shifting patterns of light on the ceiling of The Blackwood, he’d felt a determined swell of tenderness in his chest. He’d have done anything in his power to take that trauma away again, to reinstate her blind, arrogant, careless sense of assurance. He’d have laid down his life in a heartbeat if it meant shielding this woman from further distress. He’d always known that in his line of work the possibility of exchanging his life for his principal’s existed. But he’d never fully understood it until that night, he’d never willingly embraced it until that dark moment.

In that oddly elucidative moment, he’d felt a sudden and overwhelming sense of foreboding. Something in him knew – just _knew_ , deep in his gut – that this thing they’d entered into couldn’t possibly end in anything other than disaster. They were tangled in some larger web that would never allow both of them to emerge alive. Then, he’d assumed that his would be the life sacrificed. Not hers. Julia would live. And he would die. That was the natural order of things. The invisible, dispensable bodyguard gave their life for the precious, endangered personage. And with this act, his penance would be paid. He would be posthumously absolved of any former ill-will that had allowed harm to creep in and come to Julia Montague.

It was just as his fears reached fever pitch that she stirred, breaking his train of thought. Julia stretched and yawned and he caught it, imitated it, feigning waking. Her face had looked untroubled and unlined, one cheek ruddy from where it had been pressed to his chest. Her hair still held the previous day’s curl. And her legs shifted against his beneath the covers.

“Did you sleep?” he murmured, voice croaking in his throat.

She gave a contented hum, running a hand over his chest before looking up at him and asking, “Did you?”

He yawned again, hummed in the affirmative.

She smiled, eyes narrowing slyly. “Liar.” She slid on top of him in her negligee, chest grazing his and thighs parting in a low kneel. “I need you rested, Sergeant.” She plunged her hands under his pillow, planted a kiss on one side of his neck. “I need you alert…” she kissed the other side, rolled her hips over his, “and attentive.”

His hips rose beneath her, his hands slipped beneath the skimpy black satin. “You have my full…” he hardened and she moaned, “and undivided attention, Ma’am.”

She’d been smiling when she kissed him. So had he. And all his previous fears seemed utterly ridiculous. The result of an overanxious mind. A fever dream, nothing more. Now, he’s not so sure. He can’t shake the feeling that everything turned out opposite to how it should’ve. He can’t shake the memory of her voice breathing the word _liar_. He can’t shake his guilt over the fact that when she came clean with him, he didn’t reciprocate. Julia died without ever knowing of his association with Andy Apsted. And while one part of him is relieved, a much larger part condemns his own cowardice. It longs to suffer the ramifications of his actions, to receive his well-earned punishment.

Instead, he gets dreams. Blissful dreams, for the most part. Soft lit fantasies rather than torturous nightmares. He knows at some point, he’ll have to put a mental full-stop on them. He’ll have to accept that Julia Montague was a means to an end. Someone who woke him up, helped him heal then sent him back to where he undoubtedly belongs. She was someone who was important to him for a short, intense period that is now over. If he wants things to progress with Vicky, he will need to let her go. He can’t sleep next to his wife if he’s still dreaming about his dead lover.

For now, he lets the dreams happen. But only for now. Because for now, she helps him sleep.  
  


* * *

  
She can’t sleep.

It’s not the pain. It’s the inactivity. She’s bored out of her brain.

She’s accustomed to a full schedule, a brisk pace. She’s used to creating policies and attending functions, giving interviews and chairing meetings. She’s used to endless twists and turns, to the thrill of infighting and manoeuvring and competition. She misses it. She misses the physical movement and the intellectual stimulation. God help her, she even misses the petulant roar of parliament. She misses popularist polls and Andrew Marr’s irritating voice. She misses waking up to a new front page every morning.

She gets the important papers delivered but she’s not involved in their contents anymore. Her face, her words, her politics don’t feature. She argues with the television and radio to no avail. No one is listening, no one cares for her opinion. She tries striking up conversations on current events with her nurses but she suspects they all hate her. They’ll protect her secret due to binding NDAs but not out of any sense of loyalty or love. They’ll check her vitals and provide her pills but, one by one, they tacitly refuse to entertain her in her self-imposed quarantine.

So each night she goes to bed unsatisfied, buzzing with unspent energy, unexorcised words. Immediately after her surgery, her body needed to rest and recuperate. And the drugs knocked her out for long periods of time. But now, she lies awake, night after night, watching the telly into the wee small hours. It’s partly fear. She knows that. Dread of the nightmares that sporadically hit. They started after Thornton Circus, got worse after St Matthew’s. But at least after the first attempt on her life, there was someone there to hold her. Someone to shake her awake and assure her she was safe. It doesn’t make sense to her now, knowing what she knows of David Budd. Because he’d been so gentle with her, so genuinely kind and tender. Like he cared. Like he actually cared.

As she’d panted and hung her head, he’d headed calmly into her en-suite to return with a glass of water and wet washcloth. She sipped the water while he pressed the washcloth to the back of her neck, swept it down her clammy back. When she finished drinking, he handed it to her, fingers grazing hers.

“They’ll pass,” he told her.

She ran the cloth down her arms, between her breasts, over her lips. She wanted to ask if he knew that from personal experience but refrained. She just took a deep breath and forced her heartbeat to slow. Visiting the morgue had been a mistake. It gave her nameless nemesis permission to come back and haunt her. Folding the washcloth in two, she set it on the nightstand.

“You’re fine…” David smoothed her hair away from her sweaty temple, stroked her cheek with his thumb. “You’re going to be fine,” he insisted, voice low and firm in the quiet dark. “I’ll make sure of it.”

She folded into him, let him embrace her. He kissed her hair, her brow, her cheekbone. Then he held her as she fell back to sleep. She woke hours later with his arms still around her and her lips pressed to his chest. In the morning, they made love. And every night after that, until their last, they slept in the same bed. 

“Bastard,” she mutters at the ceiling of her cell.

The blue light from the television flickers over the aged surface. She has an irrational hatred of the moulding, of the peeling paint in one corner. In her mind, she calls it names. Names like _bastard_ and _traitor_ and _liar_. More words that don’t get expended, that can’t find their rightful target. Julia glances at the television screen, the panel of political commentators chatting on despite her having pressed the mute button twenty minutes ago. She calls them bastards too. All of them. Bastards, traitors. Liars. Then she curses herself, her own unrelenting consciousness, the spectre of sleeplessness that won’t let her be.

She shakes her head at the ceiling, feels a hot tear pat on her pillow. Her voice chokes, the word sticking in her throat as she chants again, “Bastard…”

_TBC..._


	4. Hunger

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She’s a fugitive trying so hard not to exist. He’s the lover trying so hard to forget.

A package arrives in the mail. A warning or a threat. He doesn’t know which. It’s anonymous. No demands or instructions accompany the contents. But someone clearly wants him to know that they know about his inappropriate relationship with Julia Montague.

He got rid of all the recordings he had of her voice. He handed them over to the officers investigating her murder long ago. But this isn’t a recording of her exchanging cagey remarks with Stephen Hunter-Dunn or Richard Longcross. It’s of him and Julia, and what they can be heard doing has nothing whatever to do with politics.

He remembers the night it must have been recorded. He’d been pissed about something and had taken it out on The Blackwood’s unsuspecting gym equipment. Back in his room, his annoyance had resurfaced when he emerged from his shower to find no clean undies in his suitcase. His towel dropped to the floor as he rummaged a little too vigorously through the small selection of clothes he’d brought with him. He hated living out of a bag. It reminded him of being in the army. Or of those first few months after Vicky kicked him out. He’d couch-surfed a while, refusing to admit the permanency of their separation and commit to a place of his own. When he finally signed the lease on his flat, it felt like the worst kind of a failure, final confirmation that his marriage was over.

With his back turned and mind occupied, he hadn’t heard her approach. She simply appeared at the twin doors they’d gotten in the habit of keeping ajar.

“I feel distinctly overdressed.”

David turned at the sound of her voice, low and lilting and husky. Julia stood on the threshold, a shoulder propped against the doorframe and a wineglass dangling from her perfectly manicured fingertips. She looked as immaculate as ever, dressed in navy and cream, her pants pinstriped and her blouse silky. She hadn’t even dispensed with the high heels that helped her stride so impressively from conference room to office, from car to government chamber, from television studio to upmarket restaurant.

David glanced down at his naked body, felt his penis stir between his thighs. He faced her fully, watched her eyes slowly descend. Julia never refrained from showing her appreciation of his physical form. It was a nice change after Vicky, who’d gradually come to eye him with a mixture of caution and disappointment. And even, he sometimes thought, a level of concealed disgust. Julia’s eyes were never fearful, always direct, often hungry. Lazily, languidly, sensually so. She was a woman adept at image, good with details. So as a lover, she was almost as stimulated by visuals as she was by touch.

David planted his feet a little wider, lifted a hand to indicate her state of dress in relation to his. “I could help with that, if you like.”

Julia sipped her wine, lips curving up in a small smile. She stepped inside his room, heels clicking slowly across the hardwood floor. Her gaze swept over his bed then returned to his body. She moved closer as he stood still, skin prickling with tension and arousal. Eyes on his, she sat on the end of his bed. She tipped her head to one side as she considered him. Then she took one last sip of her drink and set it on the floor by her feet.

“Come here,” she murmured, soft and certain.

He abandoned his suitcase, stepped over his wet towel. He moved towards her in bare feet, feeling every inch of his nakedness. Julia’s head tipped further and further back as he approached, her eyes maintaining contact. Her gaze only relinquished his when he stopped in front of her, towered over her. Her gaze dropped as her hands lifted, moving over his chest, his belly, his back. Grasping an arse cheek in each hand, she drew him closer, pressed her hot mouth to his torso. She kissed him with parted lips and a wet tongue, bathed him in scorching breaths. Her hands caressed his mottled skin, reached up to stroke his tattooed arms. Then her mouth moved lower, drawing him into the warm, wet cavern of her mouth.

His eyes closed over and his head fell back. His hips flexed as she fed him deep, sucked him hard. Her nails scratched his skin, urged him into her. Her tongue laved the tip of him, the underside of him. His hands cupped her head as he hardened further in her mouth. She moved unhurriedly, savouringly. She set up a regular rhythm then broke it. She hummed onto his cock then withdrew completely. She kept him on sexual tenterhooks, kept him guessing. Within minutes, she had him heaving, chest puffing in and out with want and anticipation. David stroked her cheek as she sat back, tossed her hair out of her eyes. She ran a hand up his body, fingers delving into his chest hair and palm pressing flat to one of his pecs. He reached down for the hem of her blouse, drew it up over her head. Julia unhooked her bra and tossed it aside. So that the next time she took him in her mouth, her breasts brushed against his thighs, making her nipples peak.

The recording is high quality. It picks up everything. Every hum and groan and rustle. He can hear the moment she moves back on the bed and lays down, the moment he unzips her trousers and pulls them off. He can hear her sigh as his hand slips between her legs, parting her lips and spreading her arousal. He can definitely hear the drawn out “Daaavviiiiddd…” she emits when he enters her. He used to love that. Her voice. How she said his name. How she’d moan it in unadulterated surrender and satisfaction. Her moan also marks the point at which the recording becomes truly incriminating. Because the words they exchange give very little away. Her mouth on his cock only resulted in some soft slurps and hums and swipes. But once he’s inside her, they begin gasping in ecstatic unison. The bed can be heard, straining under every thrust.

Their pace increases until Julia is giving a throaty cry with each plunge. He hears himself mutter her name, a wet smack as he plants a sloppy kiss on her slick chest. David listens to her come, her cries rising in pitch and her hands slapping desperately at his flesh. There’s a pause after she finishes. Some more laboured breaths. He thinks he might have withdrawn at this point, looked down into her flushed, post-orgasmic face. She smiled up at him maybe, eyelids drooping lazily. She stroked his face, something curious about her touch, her half-conscious consideration. Her other hand had flopped onto the mattress, lying loose above her head. And when he slid back into her, he slid his hand into her open palm, lacing his fingers with hers. Seated deep inside her, he leaned down to kiss her mouth, bite at her lips.

“Fuck me,” she whispered into his kiss, her hand tightening on his. “Please, David. Fuck me…”

Since her death, he’s tried half-heartedly to convince himself that fucking Julia was just that and only that. Fucking. Without her around, it’s easier to believe, easier to dismiss. But the mystery recording makes it difficult to downgrade their affair. The sexual connection between them was undoubtedly strong – stronger than he’d ever experienced. He’d been hungry for attention, for tactile affection, for the sort of full-bodied acceptance that Julia so willingly offered. Breaking the carnal drought Vicky had imposed brought life back into his body – pleasure and excitement and release. But there had also been some kind of strange connection between him and Julia, an almost immediate intimacy and instinctual loyalty. An understanding of mind and soul. It’s there, he can hear it. In every awed pant, delighted sigh and naked hum.

He pulls the earbuds from his ears just as Julia is about to climax for a second time and just as he’s about to follow her. The recording continues for another minute or so but he’s got the gist. David rises from his bed, paces the floor. He eyes the plain packaging the USB arrived in. It gives nothing away.

He jumps when his phone rings, his wife’s face appearing on the screen. He answers as tinny post-coital giggles leak from his abandoned earbuds. He disconnects the USB before the recording concludes. He shoves it back in the manila envelope, stuffs the envelope in his sock drawer.

He looks at it lying there. Evidence. Confirmation. Of something.

Vicky’s voice cuts in. “Dave? Are you listening to me, Dave?”

He starts, makes his voice sound deliberately cheery. “Yeah, love. I’m here. I’m listening...”

Vicky resumes relaying the details of Ella’s sports carnival. David takes a last look at the half-concealed envelope containing the incriminating recording. Then he slides the drawer shut.  


* * *

  
She used to fantasise about moving to Switzerland. Back in the initial stages of her recovery, back when she was committed to her escape plan. She’d wanted out. Of everything. Out of politics, out of the limelight. Away from David, away from the pain and humiliation of his betrayal. She was in so much pain that she couldn’t distinguish the physical from the emotional. All she’d wanted was to feel nothing. She craved neutrality. And she thought Switzerland would be the perfect place to find it. She could live on a farm. Raise goats. Eat chocolate. Wear skirts. Even in the fantasy, she quickly grew bored.

Now, so many monotonous months later, all she fantasises about is returning to her old life, her old job, her old wardrobe, her old nemeses. She misses high heels and that first morning coffee. She misses feeling like her life had purpose. But she can’t conceive of any way to re-enter the world that isn’t utterly ridiculous. How does one stage a triumphant return from the dead? It was a question for Hollywood, not for real life. None of her PR consultants had ever covered such an extreme possibility. But it’s all she thinks about as she wanders the streets of London.

She can’t wander far. She’s out of her wheelchair but she still walks with a limp and requires the assistance of a cane. Her doctor tells her she probably always will. Even with the cane, it doesn’t take long for her bones to start aching and her system to start craving another hit of pain relief. The first time she ventured outside, she expected to be recognised immediately. But, after ten years in the public eye, it’s almost funny how anonymous she’s become. Death will do that. It’s the perfect cover. No one’s expecting to see her. And even if they did, they probably wouldn’t recognise her. Not with all the changes to her face and frame. She wears a dark hat and glasses just to be sure. That, coupled with the cane and her beige trench coat, allows her to stroll the city undisturbed.

One of her favourite haunts is the park where they quarantined David. It’s mere blocks from her building. She watched the whole ordeal unfold on television, switching between channels as she tried to work out from a few meagre, mediated facts whether he was a goodie or a baddie, a terrorist or a victim, the man she thought he was or the man Roger painted him as. She tried to access higher intelligence but her avenues of influence and information were cut off the moment she decided to be dead. It was the price – one of many – she’d paid for her safety. All she could do was watch helplessly as he stalked through the city, a deadly device strapped to his body and his wife pacing gravely at his side.

It was the first time she’d seen David’s wife, and her stomach sunk at how pretty she was, how light and young. They looked right together. Her small frame and blonde hair complemented his dark, contained intensity. As they marched determinedly down the evacuated streets of the city, she couldn’t help imagining them marching jubilantly up the aisle of a church after saying their vows. She wasn’t sure if they even married in a church. She couldn’t even recall Mrs Budd’s first name. The other woman had never been particularly real to her. But suddenly and rather uncomfortably, she’d seen herself as a usurper, a reckless intruder meddling in someone else’s most sacred affairs.

Even so, as she walks in circles around the spot where he stood – alone and abandoned, bloody and desperate – she can’t help feeling that she should’ve been there. Her presence was required, her voice needed in his defence. And she let him down. She’d been stuck by the telly in her wheelchair, unable to speak or move or act. Her deadness weighed her down, made her powerless for the first time in her adult life. She hadn’t known what to do with that dead weight, how to break out of her ineffective bubble. Eventually, she saw his wife join him, saw them start to move forward. Mr and Mrs Budd had practically walked past her door on their resolute pilgrimage. A fact she cannot afford to view any other way but ironically.

After all, she’d spent years courting the media, heightening her visibility and cultivating her image. Then, overnight, she was a non-entity. She was mute. Irrelevant. Invisible. It was her worst nightmare. Although for David, it was probably for the best. He had that lovely, loyal wife at his side. No doubt she was who he’d wanted and needed all along. Mrs Budd was a nurse, she remembered that much. She would make sure he got help, that he moved on with his life. Mrs Budd could be of use to him. Unlike her. She couldn’t. Not anymore. She could pull no strings for him, offer no perks to him. She couldn’t even offer the same face and body he had at one time taken such pleasure in. Faint lines around her eyes and a few extra pounds on her ripening frame were the least of her worries now. Not with scars and burns and broken bones and a physique that was gradually wasting away.

Julia takes a seat on a wooden bench, her hip joints burning and her breath huffing with pain. She’d tried to help out with his son but in all probability she’d been a disruptive force in David Budd’s life. Selfish and seductive, taking what she wanted of him with little regard for what he truly needed. If she looks back, she can see that she was the one who initiated all of their physical encounters. She reached for him in the aftermath of the Thornton Circus attack. She opened the door to continue what they both had every reason to regret. She unzipped her trousers and slipped a hand inside, lolling against her bedroom door in an utterly transparent act of enticement.

She pauses, slipping off her glasses and folding them in her lap. David Budd was, however, not a man to be manipulated. He might have followed her lead but he did so willingly, avidly and repeatedly. Nothing about his participation had ever seemed feigned or forced. That night, when she’d moved away from her bedroom door, beckoning him with a look, he had other choices. But he chose to follow her. He chose to continue what she started. Stepping out of her heels, she heard him swiftly secure his weapon then stride unerringly from his bedroom to hers. Appearing at the door, his eyes had leaked dark desire. But when she moved to reach for him rather than herself, David gave a tight shake of his head.

“No,” he grunted. “Keep going.”

He sipped his beer as he watched. She faced him fully, let her trousers sag about her hips. His eyes drifted downwards as she slid her fingers back into her folds. She watched his mouth as he drank, watched his lips purse and his Adam’s apple bob with each swallow. She watched him advance, a few slow steps at a time, his free hand lifting to loosen his tie, unbutton his collar. He drew closer, until he was standing in front of her, looking down at her face as she pleasured herself for him. His clothes brushed hers, his mouth lifted in one corner. When he reached around her to place his beer on the nightstand, she could feel his heat, his hunger. She could smell his skin, his sweat, his aftershave. Her eyes slipped shut, her lips parted with want. Straightening, he stopped in at her ear to deliver his next order.

“On the bed,” he murmured. “Lie back.”

She obeyed, sitting on the edge before easing back. David dropped to his knees, making quick work of her trousers then inserting himself between her open thighs. She peeled her top off, flung away her bra. He tugged her closer, ran both hands up the outsides of her legs, from ankle to hip then back again. Hands on her knees, he looked up at her.

“Don’t stop,” he reminded her, lowering his mouth to her skin. “Keep going…”

His fingers stroked her calves as he bit and kissed and licked her spread thighs. And in between each bite and kiss and lick, he kept a close eye on what was occurring beneath her underwear. He let her work, watched her middle finger circle her clit, her other fingers stroke and separate her folds. He kissed the back of her hand, nipped at her knuckles through the satin. He nudged at her with his nose, inhaled deeply. He glanced up at her face, flushed from her ministrations and his intense observation. Then he curled his fingers into the waistband of her underwear and peeled them down and off. He hadn’t told her to stop, so she didn’t. She just sighed, closed her eyes and felt his mouth join her hand.

He licked her fingers, sucked her thumb. He lifted her legs to his shoulders, sliding his hot mouth up the inside of one thigh. She whimpered when he tongued her wrist, slurped at her lips, drank her arousal off her own flesh. For a while they worked together, competing for control of her cunt. Then she acquiesced and allowed his hunger to take over, cupping his face and drawing him in. His tongue slithered up and down, thrust inside then swirled around. She arched and squirmed on the mattress, keeping him close with her hands on his head and her thighs round his neck. He slid both hands under her arse, parting her with his thumbs and lifting her off the bed in order to gain better access. He ate her with relish and she came so hard, her eyes clamped shut and her toes curled and entire body racked and quivering.                          

She probably groaned his name, probably too much, probably too loud. Because he reached a hand up and muffled her mouth. She’d still been coming so she just pushed into his palm with her open lips, sucked his fingers, bit the flesh of his palm. As she was coming down, she heard his zipper. Then his arms were pulling her floppy body off the bed, onto the floor and into his lap. She was dripping wet so he put her straight on his cock, holding her up as he started to fuck her. She leaned back against the edge of the bed, head and shoulders resting on the mattress. David took the opportunity offered to him, leaning in to suck on her nipples.

A dog nudges her foot and Julia opens her eyes. Her hands are grasping her sunglasses tight in her lap. She leans down, fumbles for a stick then throws it across the brown grass. The mutt takes off and the far-off owner gives her a wave of thanks. Julia nods in response then takes shaky breath. She thinks about sex far too frequently for a recluse without romantic prospects. For an invalid whose shattered hipbone would probably never withstand the sort of fucking David had liked to give her. And he had liked it, she was sure of that much. Whatever other plans he had for her, his participation in their sexual relationship had been full-bodied, if not wholehearted. Of course, there’s little point in going over it now, trying retrospectively to separate actions from intentions, truth from fiction, possibility from actuality.

It’s starting to give her a headache. Or maybe that’s just the pain kicking in again. Julia rises, tests her legs. She needs to get back before it escalates. She slips on her sunglasses, glances at her watch. Time for lunch – a scrumptious collection of pills accompanied by a tall glass of red. And a lecture from her nurse about combining the two. 

_TBC..._


	5. Exposure

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She’s a fugitive trying so hard not to exist. He’s the lover trying so hard to forget. (That's right, I'm still not giving away anything. You'll just have to read).

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter goes out to amickhawes who talked me out of my writery funk and convinced me that this story was worth continuing. Thanks to her and to LavenderIstheNewBlack for spruiking this fic and cheering me on. Hope you both enjoy xoxo

He doesn’t listen to the recording again. He doesn’t have to. He knows it’s there. He stares at his closed sock drawer as he lies alone in his bed. He knows that part of her is trapped inside. Part of them. Someone stole and bottled an aspect of what they created in secret. And now they’re using it to destroy him. Or unnerve him, drive him mad. Even if he closes his eyes, the threat remains. The question of its origin. And the undeniable sound of her voice. No longer an echo or a fading memory but an ear worm, perfectly preserved and deeply entrenched. He can press the sides of his pillow to his ears but he still hears it.

Her breath. At the back of his skull. Inhaling and exhaling. Sighing his name. Seething with life.   

He checks his mailbox compulsively. The packages don’t arrive in any consistent pattern but they keep on coming. After the recording of him and Julia, there are pictures of them in bed together. They’ve been taken from a distance, through the open curtains of his bedroom at The Blackwood. The images are monochrome and slightly pixilated but she’s recognisable, head thrown back as she rides his naked body. His hands are on her hips, his eyes on her breasts, his expression rapt and precipitate. Nothing accompanies the pictures. No note, no demand. As expected, there’s no signature and no return address.

Over a week passes before another arrives. This time it’s him and Vicky. The pictures are more recent, making his scalp prick hot and cold. He stares at the last image. The two of them walk down a pier licking ice cream cones. Vicky’s hair is whipped by the wind. His mouth is open on a half complete sentence. Ella and Charlie run ahead of them, barely in view but undoubtedly part of whatever silent threat is being made.

He doesn’t tell her right away. He wants to investigate a little first. And he fears losing the fragile equilibrium he’s found in his professional and personal life. But when photos arrive of Vicky dropping their kids off at their respective schools, all three of their faces closely and clearly captured, David knows he has to notify both his work and his wife.

He’s pulled from the field and returned to his desk. And Vicky immediately withdraws from him. She regains that tense, troubled, reluctant look that none of his actions or assurances could ever seem to shift. Their trips to the cinema and seaside cease. She won’t touch him anymore and she certainly won’t let him touch her. They attend the police interview together, arriving in separate cars. They face the investigating officer across his desk, their hands in their laps and a stony silence dividing their chairs.

An investigation has been opened but, just as David found when he ran his unofficial solo investigation, there’s little to go on. The threat is deliberately non-specific and the originator has kept his or her identity anonymous. The main aim at this point seems to be to unsettle them, terrorise them. Until the threats escalate, there’s not much the police can do. It’s the answer David expected. Vicky sighs, fingers knit in her lap. She asks the DI if these new threats relate in some way to Julia Montague, whether they might be part of the same conspiracy. The DI glances at David then returns his gaze to his wife. He nods slowly, admitting that it’s likely there’s some connection.

Outside the police station, Vicky runs a hand through her hair, muttering, “I thought this was all over.”

David keeps his hands at his sides. He resists the urge to reach out and comfort her. “Me too.”

“God…” She turns away, rummaging in her bag for her car keys. When she finds them, she huffs her hair out of her eyes and looks at him askance, “I wish you’d never met that awful woman…”

He doesn’t reply. He knows he’s not meant to. He just watches her walk to her car and drive away. Then he lifts his face to the sky, eyes closed and hands in his pockets. It’s far too early, still technically morning. But he goes to the nearest pub and downs a pint. He’s got an inkling about who’s behind this. The police must do too. After all, you don’t take out a kingpin like Luke Aitkens and walk away unscathed. They had to expect there would be ramifications, retaliation of the worst kind. Even if you succeed in cutting off the head of a snake, another simply grows to avenge its predecessor.

He’ll have to tread carefully. His family is once again a target. The police said they were willing to provide some protection but they either aren’t concerned enough or don’t have the resources to relocate them all over again. Instead, the DI recommended visiting any family they might have outside the city. David drains the foamy dregs of his beer. When Vicky’s calmed down, he’ll try to convince her of the wisdom of staying with her mum for a while.

He pops a mint before heading back to work. Then spends the rest of the day ignoring the pile of paperwork in his inbox and searching Aitkens’ known associates instead, attempting to pinpoint a likely successor. It’s dark by the time he leaves. David heads straight for the gym for his usual routine. Treadmill. Weights. Pool. Julia in her black one-piece… She’s the one puzzle piece that doesn’t fit. Why threaten a dead woman? Or was the threat to his reputation, his newfound, hard-won sense of security?

The answer to this question arrives two days later. In a plain manila envelope, just like all the rest. Inside is a series of images that at first he doesn’t understand. A rugged up figure on the street, sitting on a park bench in a coat, hat and glasses. There aren’t enough details in the photos to identify their location. It could as easily be New York, Edinburgh or Paris as London. And the woman looks unfamiliar to him. A sad, angular sort taking short steps and keeping her head lowered. Only with the final photo does the shape of her start to make sense.

She sits on a wooden bench, dead leaves at her feet and dark glasses in her lap. Her face is drawn. She doesn’t seem to be wearing makeup and her eyes look sunken, her cheekbones sharper. Beneath her hat, her hair is dead straight, a little longer, hiding her neck and grazing her shoulders. Her shoulders hunch and her boots are muddy but her nails look perfectly manicured. The longer he looks at the image, the more the scattered pieces fall into place. It’s not wishful thinking. It’s not a mirage. It’s her. He’s convinced of it. Not a her he ever knew. These photos don’t fit into the life she once lived. No time stamp has been provided but they could only have been taken recently. They could only indicate a new life, a new phase, however wretched.

He shuffles back through the collection of images, examining each one in turn. The photos don’t show the Right Honourable Julia Montague, Home Secretary and future PM. This is a different woman. This is a bombing victim struggling to put herself back together. This is a fugitive in fear, in flight. This is a ghost trying so hard not to exist.  
  


* * *

  
She becomes more bold, more careless. She keeps a private security service in her employ but ignores all their best advice. Against their recommendations, she goes out more often, retakes the same routes, ventures further afield. Her body’s becoming stronger, her mind hungrier. She goes to the library, spends hours searching the stacks. She leaves with as many books as she can carry, a car driven by her personal bodyguard trailing her the whole way. The man is Polish, large and tattooed. He speaks very little and, when he does, it’s in a thick accent.

On returning to her dreary flat, she usually settles in an armchair in a sunny spot with a political biography of some description, a cup of black tea at her elbow. This week, it’s Clementine Churchill. Julia nods off after the first chapter, her body heating in the afternoon sun. She’s not cognisant enough to move, despite the uncomfortable sting on her skin. She doesn’t enjoy warmth anymore. She prefers always to be cool.

She remembers coming to in the ambulance, feeling that first rush of hot/cold agony. Something was injected into her veins to take it away, to stop her from screaming through grit teeth. But whatever it was, it didn’t do its job fast enough. Not nearly fast enough.

David had been there, gripping her bloody hand. “Hang on, Ma’am, you’re going to be alright...” He’d shifted closer, taking the place of the woman wielding the needle. “Julia…” His voice softened as he gripped her hand in both of his. “Stay with me, love, it’s going to be alright…”

She’d gasped his name, hot tears filling her eyes. She thinks maybe he apologised. Maybe more than once. She can’t remember. She remembers his guilt, remembers it radiating off him. She remembers him holding her hand until they pulled her out of the back of the ambulance and handed her over to the emergency team. And she knows she asked for him afterwards. Or tried to.

All wrapped in white and drugged out of her mind, the one thing she does recall is murmuring his name. There had been people there, a series of blue blurs. But none of them would bring her what she wanted. When her mother arrived, she felt sure she would bring her what she so desperately needed. She’d fetched Roger instead. Roger with his nasty insinuations and damning photographic evidence. He’d put a hand on her arm as he told her that he’d make sure that news of her “death” reached her PPO in person.

Julia rises from her armchair and opens a window to let in the cool breeze. It washes over her, flutters her loose clothing. Her Polish shadow sits in his car outside her building. All around him, people pass by, living their lives. Going to work, picking up children, meeting lovers. Even her Pole must go home at the end of each day, kiss his girlfriend or boyfriend, drink beer with his mates, pay bills with his hard-earned wages, fix his car on weekends, hang his washing out to dry. She envies them all. Envies their normalcy, envies their humanity. She feels so shut out of it that she’d like to scream. She’d like to grasp the window frame and let out almighty yell of frustration, of resentment, of undeniable presence. She wants the world to admit – to not be able to escape the fact – that she lives. She lives.

Even as she thinks this, even as the noise rises in her throat, her eye is drawn to a man. Not because he makes any movement. More because he doesn’t. His immobility on the busy street singles him out. He hasn’t moved an inch for the minute or two that she’s been standing there staring out at the city. He hasn’t adjusted his glasses or turned the page of his newspaper or taken a sip of his coffee. She steps back a little, edging behind the curtain. Despite her frustration and bravado, she feels her gut clench with fear. Her hands curl into fists.

She watches him another moment. He still doesn’t move. She clocks his powerful brown hands and menacing black brows. Then she watches as very slowly he lifts his head and looks right at her.

Her heart leaps into her throat. She watches, stunned and stationary, as the man rises, takes a first and last sip of his coffee, folds his paper in two and calmly buttons his coat. Then he starts to cross the road, heading straight for the entrance to her building.

Her Pole is already on it. He intercepts the man before he has the chance to get any closer. It’s over in less than a minute. It’s swift and inconspicuous. Julia watches, breath held. Then, with her hands trembling, she closes the window, draws the curtain and dashes to the door to make sure it’s securely locked.

_TBC..._


	6. Collision

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She’s a fugitive trying so hard not to exist. He’s the lover trying so hard to forget.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter goes out to Bexinthecity247 for luring me out of lurkdom and making me write Lavenderbudd. And also for being awesome xo

His therapist notices his distraction, his agitation. She asks about the photos and watches as his knees stop bouncing. David assumes she means the photos of him and his family. Or possibly of him and the former Home Secretary. He hasn’t told anyone about the more recent photos that show Julia alive, if not well.

“An investigation is underway?” she adds, brows lifted.

David nods. He should’ve known there would be interdepartmental chatter about this. They’re keeping an eye on him. They’re not the only ones.

“Those photos….They must make you feel very,” she searches for the most sensitive word, opting for, “…exposed.”

“I don’t like exposing my family,” he admits.

She glances down at the file in her lap. “We’ve spoken a lot about your family, David. About your feelings of guilt and responsibility.”

She pauses.

He nods. “Aye.”

“But I believe these packages contained pictures of you with Julia Montague as well.”

Another pause.

Another nod. “That’s correct.”

She lowers her eyes, flips her pen in her hand. “We’re yet to talk about her, about what she meant to you. If anything.”

David looks at his lap, jaw grit. He knows he’s got to talk about her. He’s avoided it so far but she was so much a part of what brought him to this place that he can’t actually refuse. Not if he wants to remain a serving police officer and certified sane man.

He opens his mouth, “I…” then shakes his head, “don’t know what to say. About that.”

His therapist bobs her head a few times. “Well. We all knew who Julia Montague was. But you knew her better than most.”

His chin dips. “I suppose that’s true.”

“So just tell me what she was to you,” she murmurs in her usual hushed and measured tone.

“I don’t know...” He shifts in his seat, forces himself to speak of her in the past tense. “She was just…normal. You know? Nice.”

“I see.”

The doctor leaves a deliberate gap and he falls for it, rushes in to fill it.

“Julia…” His eyes drift round the room. His brows frown at the furniture and the frames on the walls. He thinks of her smiling over at him as she pulled a wine bottle from her fridge. He thinks of her standing in her glass cage at the Home Office, staring silently out over the city, silhouetted against the black sky and bright lights. He thinks of the shirt she gave back to him that still held traces of her scent. He thinks of her giggling under white sheets with him, soothing his wounded flesh with her gentle touch. And the words come out almost as he thinks them, as he realises that they’re true. “Julia was…generous. And…beautiful. Lonely. But, kind of funny….sometimes.”

His eyes flick back to her face to see if he’s said the right thing. His therapist smiles tightly. Then asks:

“So you liked her.”

Not at first, he thinks. At first, he despised her. Or wanted to. Then he was impressed by her. If slightly confounded. Only gradually did he begin to like her. What that like was rapidly growing into is something he’s not prepared to admit aloud, not to her or anyone.

“But you must have known sleeping with her was wrong.”

He frowns. “In what sense?”

“Against regulations,” she clarifies. “And enormously risky. For both of you.”

He gives a nod of concession. “It was, as you say, very risky.”

Fleeting frustration crosses her face. She’s struggling to keep the conversation going, to get something significant out of him. Something she can use, something that will make sense. “So then…” she blinks a few times, shakes her head, “why risk it, David?”

Maybe she wants him to admit that he’d fucked Julia Montague out of hate, not love. That it was an act of sabotage on his part, deliberately designed to compromise her standing. Or that it was an act of self-sabotage designed to destroy all the good in his life that he didn’t think he deserved. He did it out of residual, misdirected rage. Or perhaps he did it because of Vicky – a vindictive reaction to his wife’s sexual rejection, a reckless impulse after finding out about her new relationship. He knows how the story goes. How it’s supposed to go. But none of it explains what arose between him and his principal during their short stay at The Blackwood.

David blinks at his doctor and replies simply, “Like you said – I liked her.” He shrugs then adds for shock value, “I liked fucking her.”

She nods impassively, robbing him of any reaction. “And is that all it was? Fucking?”

He deflates slightly. He doesn’t know how to answer that. He refuses to. His knees start bobbing again. His hands re-clench in his lap. His therapist makes a note in her file then takes a cleansing breath. She knows she’s gotten as much out of him as she’s going to. And she knows better than to push for more. So she opens a different line of questioning, dropping the unyielding topic of Julia Montague.

After therapy, he heads straight for the hospital, hoping to catch Vicky on her break. Round the back, there’s a patio with umbrellaed tables where she likes to sit and eat. He weaves through the tables of bescrubbed personnel until he spots her familiar form. David halts.

A man stands at her table, smiling down at her. Vicky shields her eyes from the sunlight as she speaks to him, smiles back at him. Her open, happy expression closes and clouds the moment that he intrudes. Her eyes shift and her voice stammers as she introduces the other man as Doctor Levine, a paediatrician at the hospital.

David faces him, sizes him up. The other man is taller than him, carelessly handsome in his white coat and lanyard. His hair is sandy, his skin freckled. He exudes health and ease and light. When he shakes his hand, his grip is firm. His accent has traces of a lazy drawl, unlike David’s clipped, suspicious brogue.

“Tom, please,” the man insists.

David straightens his spine. “Tom, would you mind if I had a moment with my wife?”

He ducks his head, “Of course not…” and heads back into the hospital.

David watches him go. “S’that the man you were seeing?”

“Dave…”

He rounds on his wife, doesn’t lower his voice. “ _Is it_?”

Vicky gives a sad sigh and starts packing up her uneaten lunch. “We’re not seeing each other anymore.”

“You _work together_ ,” he points out. “You see each other _every day_!”

“We’re not _dating_ anymore,” she hisses, glancing about at her curious co-workers. “And we don’t see each other _every_ day.”

He shakes his head at her, brows furrowed. “Why didn’t you tell me, Vic?”

Her eyes lift to his, wide and beseeching. “I didn’t think it was important. Tom and I… we’re just friends now. And…” she looks away, her voice trailing off, “everything was going so well for you.”

For you, he notes. Not for us. He swallows and takes a seat at her table. This only makes what he came to do easier. Vicky doesn’t take much convincing either. She has some leave coming and the kids have school holidays. She agrees to leave the city, stay with her mum for a while. He doesn’t ask if she’ll have any contact with Tom before or while she’s away. That’s her choice. All David cares about is having his family safely stashed away so that he can pursue the one thing on his mind. Finding out the whereabouts of the fugitive Julia Montague.         
       

* * *

  
If she were sensible, she wouldn’t follow a routine. Her security team has continually advised her against it as it makes her too easy to trace. But Wednesdays have become her library day. After the scare with the man on the street, she didn’t leave her flat for a fortnight. Her complacency quickly reinstated itself though. Or, more likely, it was her thirst for stimulation and purpose that overrode their recommendation. She likes to walk there each week, the car carrying her Pole trailing her and her book bag. She wears her glasses, her hat and her trench. And she pays attention to the hairs on the back of her neck. She picks up a coffee on the way, using a false name to collect it. She borrows books under the same name, heading home in the hope that the books will eat up her dull, future-less days.

Nothing seems different about this Wednesday. The car trailing her keeps its usual discreet distance. No one seems to act suspiciously. The hairs on the back of her neck don’t rise in alarm. But then she’s never been very good at sensing when she might be in danger. She’s always outsourced that instinct, engaging someone else to ensure her survival. She’s always had a more important job on her mind. So her nose was inevitably buried in a file or a book or a newspaper when worst case scenarios became shocking realities. Always viewing safety as someone else’s brief, she remained obliviously happy as long as whoever was tasked with protecting her didn’t impede her set path. As such, she’s never bothered too much about attuning herself to the threats that might surround her. Which left her exposed. Walking blind. 

Her Pole isn’t in his car when she exits. He’s waiting for her at the entrance of the library. He sweeps up to her, a big smile on his meaty face. He calls her by her false name, pretends that they’re old friends. Concealed by their friendly proximity, his hand seizes her elbow, holds it tight. He whisks her down the steps as unobtrusively as possible, heading for his parked car.

“Someone follow you,” he mutters, still smiling, still pretending that they’re friends going for an impromptu coffee.

Julia glances about. “Who?”

He drags her cheerfully to the curb, opens the rear car door and shoves her inside. “We lose him in traffic.”

The door slams on her. She swallows hard. She hugs her book bag, sinks back in her seat, eyes darting warily over the library’s stone steps. She looks for the man her bodyguard apprehended on the street, the man with the big brown hands and the memorable black brow. Her Pole crosses calmly to the driver’s seat, drops into it then turns to say to her:

“You may wish to hide yourself.”

His eyes dart downwards, indicating that she should duck. Then he turns, starts the car and takes off with a little screech. He swerves into the oncoming traffic, earning a few honks of indignation. Jostled around in the back seat, Julia turns to peer out the back window. At first, she sees no one. No one suspicious. No one familiar. Then she spots him, dressed in black and jogging towards a bus stop as if he’s late for a meeting. But his eyes are too alert for a business man or job seeker. They dart about, just like her bodyguard’s, just like hers. They seem to have misplaced her for a moment but they land on her the moment she turns. Even from a distance, even over the angry toots of the surrounding vehicles, she can hear him call her name.

David takes off after her car. “Julia—!”

She sinks in her seat but doesn’t turn back around. Her cheeks burn hot and her throat feels clogged. He must be mad, blowing her cover like that. But he does it again, she hears him plain as day.

“Julia, stop!”

Her Pole inches his way into a faster lane, the car stopping and starting abruptly. He beats the steering wheel, curses the traffic in his native tongue. Julia grips the leather of the seat and stares out the rear window. He’s gaining on them, his jacket flapping in the wind as he runs out into the road, weaving through the stalled traffic. Her body doesn’t know how to react to the sight of him – fear, rage, pleasure or relief. It’s possible that he’s come to finish the job, to destroy whatever remains of her life.

“Hurry!” she yells at her Pole.

“Light is red!” he yells back in his thick accent.

David swats aside a car. “Julia!!”

Most of the cars heed him, they stop and toot to avoid hitting him. But then the light turns green and the traffic starts to flow. And Julia watches as a black motorcycle emerges from the pack and heads unerringly for David. Her lips part, her eyes widen. It isn’t stopping. It’s speeding up. 

“David!!” Her palms slap desperately against her glass cage. “David!!”

The motorcycle takes him out, clips his hip hard enough to make him reel and drop. He disappears between two lanes and she loses sight of him. Julia gasps, breathless, rising in her seat to try and find him.

“Dav…” Her neck cranes, her hands drop to an ineffectual pattering. “Get up, David, get up…!” She lunges across the seat, searching for a sign of him out the side window. Her hand is just about to reach for the handle when the traffic lurches forward. The motorcycle that targeted David disappears down a side street and her driver takes off at a breakneck speed.

_TBC..._


	7. Camouflage

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They’re the walking wounded but trying desperately to conceal it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Slight delay on this chapter due to life happening. And also I wanted to get this one right. Thanks to all those who have commented, I hope you continue to enjoy :)

The flowers are by his bed when he wakes. He asks a nurse who delivered them but she says she didn’t get a name. A man, she tells him, thick accent. He waits until she leaves the room to tear the bouquet to bits. Hidden amongst the stems of roses and lavender and greenery is a note. It lists a location, day and time. She’s given him three days to get up and moving. David silently accepts the challenge.

Sunday morning is bleak. He’s too bruised to walk or drive so he takes a taxi to the park. The grass is patchy, the branches bare, the weather grey and gusty. She’s already there, seated on the bench, the living imitation of a tableau his eyes know by heart. Since it arrived, he’s spent some part of every day staring at that stationary image of her. Not because it yielded clues. The other photos in that shockingly revelatory package did. Taken from a greater distance, they eventually gave away their location. The last one simply contained the closest and clearest and most mystifying view of her. As in the photo, she practically blends into her muted surroundings. A chameleon in black hat and brown coat, dark glasses folded neatly in her lap.

David glances down at the dirt as he steps over the spot where he stood, bomb attached to his chest and blood leaking from his veins. He remembers standing there – hand, head, feet and heart all aching – and praying that of all the faces and voices surrounding him, hers might somehow, impossibly appear. It feels surreal to approach her now. But as he limps slowly closer, he schools his features into benignity, careful with every step, look and gesture not to spook her into flight.

He eases down beside her on the bench. “…Ma’am.”

Julia draws a breath. “PS Budd.” She glances assessingly his way. “Still alive and well, I see.”

He gives a grunt. “Relatively speaking…” His eyes flick left and right, spotting one man in a car, another by a bush. “I assume we’re being watched?”

“Oh, my security team insisted,” she answers fluidly.

His lips twitch with amusement but his eyes stay front. “Well, I’m glad to hear you’re taking sound security advice.”

Julia sighs in her slightly vexed, slightly superior way. “What is it I can do for you, Sergeant?”

David pauses, clears his throat. “Your life may be in danger.”

Her eyes cut to him. “From you?” Then away again.

He turns to look at her, brows furrowed. “I was cleared of any wrongdoing in your case. Don’t you read the papers?”

She scoffs and refuses to meet his gaze. “Do you honestly think I’d believe anything I read in the mainstream media?”

He faces her, shifting a little closer on the bench. “It’s not me you need to be worried about...”

He spots another man over her shoulder. He’s smoking a cigarette and minding his own business – or pretending to. The man tenses when he sees David move closer. One wrong move and he knows that man and all the rest will whisk Julia swiftly away.

David leans infinitesimally closer, voice low and urgent. “Please. Julia. Is there somewhere private we can talk?”

She turns her head, meeting his gaze properly for the first time. “I thought you wanted me to follow the advice of my security team?”

“We’re not safe,” he insists, “Out in the open like this.”

Her eyes narrow at him, then drop. Abruptly, she rises. “Follow me.”  

The man smoking the cigarette takes a few steps towards them then stalls. He mutters into his sleeve, eyes tracking their progress across the grass. David walks two steps behind, mostly out of habit. His eyes scan the area then return to Julia. Like him, she’s trying to disguise a limp. They’re the walking wounded but trying desperately to conceal it. One of her hands clenches at her side, searching for the support she used to rely on daily. He’s seen the cane in the photos but she left it behind for this meeting. It’s a show of strength on her part. Just like curling her hair and painting her face. He wouldn’t expect anything less of Julia Montague. 

They reach a set of lights, surveilled and trailed by her security team. He’s counted three but there could be more. He glances over his shoulder to check the position of one man, the man he saw at the library, the man who spirited her away before he even had a chance to approach her. When he turns back around, Julia is looking right at him. Her eyes snap forward with the blip of the pedestrian light. David’s hand hovers at her back as he ushers her across the tarmac.  


* * *

  
She removes her hat but not her jacket. Watches him pull a manila envelope from his breast pocket and spread its contents over her lacquered table. When he’s done, he rolls the envelope up tight in one hand.

“There’s a recording as well,” he murmurs without looking at her.

Julia steps up to the table, runs her eyes over the spread. “I don’t understand.”

David points to a picture of her, one taken recently. “They know you’re alive.”

“So what if I am…?” She blinks and lifts her gaze to his. “I’m not a threat anymore. RIPA 18 is dead, Mike Travis is Home Secretary. I’ve got…” she spreads her arms to indicate her drab, dated living room, “no power, no connections. After everything that’s happened,” she picks up then drops a picture of herself, camouflaged, alone and weary, “I’m…a fugitive. Nothing more.”

“You’re not in danger because of what you can do.” He pauses, gulps guilty. “You’re in danger because of what I did.”

He shuffles the pictures, brings a different image into the foreground. In it, he has her pressed against a wall, hands on her face as he kisses her. Her head is tipped to one side in surrender, her hands rest lightly on his waist. Both of them have their eyes closed. Their lips smile as they connect. They’re both fully clothed but completely immersed in this stolen moment, one of many that scatter the tabletop.

“They’re targeting people connected with me. People I care about. These pictures…” he stalls, looks down at them, “imply that you are one of those people.”

Julia averts her gaze from the images, draws a breath in through her nose. She moves to the window, peels back the curtain and gazes out at the ever-present look-out vehicle. “Your family?”

“There were pictures of them as well,” he confirms. “I’ve sent them out of town.”

She nods. “Good. That’s good….”

“You should go too.”

“Where?”

From the corner of her eye, she sees his head shake with resolve. “Anywhere. Doesn’t matter. Out of London. Somewhere safe. You should never have stuck around in the first place.”

“And how do I know…” she muses, soft and slow and careful, “that this isn’t part of some elaborate plan to draw me out and finish the job?”

The hand with the envelope lifts in a pleading gesture. “You’ve got to trust me, Julia.”

Her hand drops from the curtain. She turns to face him, scrutinising him as if from afar. His brows are raised, his shoulders tense with anticipation and concern. His face looks so open and honest and she feels her eyes turn bitter and cynical in response.

She can hardly be blamed for falling for it. For him. He appears now – as he did then – so sympathetic to her situation. So decent, so dependable. So noble, right down to his core. But it’s possible he only appeared that way because she needed him to. She craved an ally, a protector. A saviour even. So David Budd gave her one to believe in. Just as he must have given the bent coppers he no doubt aided the unalterable impression that he was on their side.

To them, he was the ultimate inside man. To the wife he cheated on, he was a faithful husband and devoted father. To the shooter who took aim at her, he was a like-minded fellow crusader. And to the bomber who all but finished the job, he was a home-grown terrorist beyond detection. He was a creature of constantly shifting shape and allegiance. Who knew what kind of violent potential actually lay beneath his chameleon-like exterior? 

“I have something to show you too,” she replies eventually.

Julia walks to the mantelpiece above the unlit fire, takes down a book and extracts a photo. She returns to the table and places the image on top of the others, its browns and greens and flesh tones popping in contrast to the monochrome. She keeps a finger on one corner of the photo and lifts her eyes to his supposedly sincere face.

“You knew this man.” Her chest rises and falls as she studies his reaction. “ _You knew_ this man and you _kept it_ from me.”

His eyes close over. “Julia…”

“There’s CCTV footage of you entering a pub with him _days_ before the Thornton Circus attack.” 

His head shakes weakly. “It’s not what you think…”

“Witnesses _place you_ at his resistance group—”

“It was a peace group!” he blurts out. “Andy believed in peaceful—”

“ _Andy_ shot at me!” she spits back. “He shot _at us_! He _killed_ Terry, he tried to kill me!”

David steps closer, regulates his tone. “I had _nothing_ to do with that. You’ve got to believe me—”

She turns away in exasperation, her face hot and her hands beginning to tremble.

“I _swear_ ,” he insists, quiet and grave. “On my _children’s lives_ , Julia.”

She turns back, breathes a moment. She considers him silently then shifts on her feet to face him fully. “Was there ever a moment,” she asks, tone purposefully measured, “even a fleeting moment, when you wished me harm?”

The insistent innocence on his face collapses. He blinks slowly, his jaw slackening. “It…wasn’t you,” he struggles to say. “It was…what you…represented—”

“Then what was this?” She sweeps her hand at the table, at the various images of them entwined. “Revenge sex—?”

“No—!”

“Then why—…?” The question chokes her. She shakes her head to dislodge the lump in her throat, strides swiftly to her drinks tray. She turns her back, standing in front of the bottles and glasses so he can’t see the furious shaking of her hands. She pours herself a whiskey, lifts it to her lips. But he speaks before the alcohol can hit her tongue. She senses him step closer and her spine stiffens with a mixture of longing and dread.

“I’d have laid down _my life_ for you, Julia.” He raises his voice in order to reach her then drops it again in apparent conviction, in entirely questionable devotion. “I still would,” he adds. “…I _still_ would.”

She sips her whiskey before turning to face him, her chin lifted and her silence resolute.

“Whatever…” he swallows, starts again after a moment. He shuffles closer across the quiet carpet. “Whatever happened…between us…I believe your life is in danger _right now_. You need to know that. You _need_ to be protected.”

She draws a half-breath, breaks eye contact with him. “Well, thank you for the intel, Sergeant. I’m sure my security team will take the necessary measures.”

She watches his jaw grit in frustration. He almost speaks, almost fights her. But she still has the will of a dictator, if not the power. And he’s been trained to obey, to take his cue when he’s been dismissed. David gives an insolent little bow of his head, tosses the envelope onto the table with the scattered photos. Then he stalks to the door and shuts it behind him.

Julia sinks into the nearest armchair. She downs the last of her drink, eyes and throat burning. She lets her head fall back against the cushions as she breathes, her whole body aching and shaking in all the wrong places.  
  
_TBC..._


	8. Succession

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She looks down at his hands then back at his face. She makes him wait before tapping his left hand with one finger. David turns it and opens it, revealing the white queen.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For reasons of reader torture, this chapter is slightly shorter. (You're gonna miss me when I'm gone and no longer doing this to you). Please enjoy and please feed the box. Thanks to those who have been consistently generous with commenting and supporting this story.

Another package arrives – pictures of Ella and Charlie playing in Vicky’s mum’s front garden. He hires a car under an assumed name and drives up there. Flying down the freeway, he thinks about the days his kids were born. He was on tour abroad so he wasn’t around for Charlie’s birth. But he remembers Ella’s like it was yesterday.

In his heart of hearts, he hadn’t been thrilled about the pregnancy. He and Vicky had only known each other a short time. Falling pregnant had happened by accident rather than by design. They were both so young – too young perhaps. Still just kids themselves. He’d barely considered fatherhood as an option let alone anticipated it coming so early on in his life.

For nine months, he meditated privately on how ill-equipped he was to become a parent. But everything changed the moment the nurse placed a screeching bundle in his arms. He’d looked down at his first-born and felt his deepest priorities shift. David knew from that day on that his chief responsibility in life would be to ensure the safety and happiness of his children.

From there, his thoughts turn to Julia and a conversation they once had under the cover of a white sheet. She’d asked him about his decision to become a solider and he’d told her about his juvenile ambition to be a doctor. Between giggles and kisses and murmured intimacies, their post-coital chatter had drifted naturally from careers to children. David had asked if she’d ever wanted children herself. He knew she didn’t have any. That information was readily available to anyone who cared to search her basic life stats. Not that he needed to. Everyone knew that Julia Montague was childless. It was an insult regularly hurled at her in the press and by the general public in order to prove her incurable heartlessness.

“I fell pregnant twice while I was married,” she told him, eyes big and brown and close, “but I miscarried both times.” Her fingertips continued caressing his skin. Her gaze flicked down before meeting his again. “Turns out I’m not able to carry a pregnancy to term. It was one of the…” she faltered, struggled over word choice, “ _difficulties_ that contributed to the demise of my marriage to Roger.”

David sighed at his blundering naiveté and opened his mouth to apologise. But Julia put two fingers on his lips, sliding in to kiss him. When she settled back on her pillow, she went on in the same hushed and pensive tone.

“It’s probably part of the reason I do the job I do. I can’t have children of my own so I look after everyone else’s.” Her lips curved up in a quiet smile. “The big ones as well as the little ones...”

He nodded in silent understanding. They were both in the people-minding business. He was assigned to her and she was assigned to an entire population. It was a heavy weight to carry. He knew as much from his time in Afghanistan. Just as he knew that ensuring the safety of a diverse and divided population was a next to impossible task.

David flicks on the car’s indicator and turns into the sleepy village where his children have been staying with their mum and nanna. He heads for the local police station first. They’ve been tasked with keeping an eye on his family but the officer in charge of their case reports nothing out of the ordinary. She seems fairly green, handing over his family’s file without any argument. When David runs his eye over the list of visitors and the log of telephone calls, one name stands out. The police have already checked him out so he scans those documents too. The man barely has a parking ticket to his name. Never married, no children. He pays his taxes on time, volunteers for a well-known children’s charity and appears to be an all-round upstanding citizen.

When he confronts Vicky about the calls, she doesn’t deny a thing. She tells him that Tom was worried about them. He cares about her and the kids so he phoned to check in.

“And the visit?” David prompts.

Vicky gives a half shake of her head. “We took the kids to the park. That’s all.”

“That’s all?”

He wanders in slow circles over his mother-in-law’s thick green grass. In the distance, the sun is beginning to set. In the trees, the birds are nesting down for the night. Vicky’s blonde hair is piled on top of her head. She’s wearing an oatmeal jumper and blue jeans and for the first time he looks at her and sees someone else’s love. A grown woman, not a girl. A stranger to him in so many ways.

“Tom’s leaving,” she murmurs as he paces, “going back to Australia. He just wanted to say goodbye in person.”

He stops pacing and looks at her. There’s something she’s not saying, he can feel it.

“He…asked us to go with him,” she adds eventually, tentatively, “but I said I couldn’t do that to you, take the kids so far away.”

He nods, asks neutrally, “He loves you?”

Vicky hesitates. Then bobs her head. “Yes.”

His chin lifts. “You love him?”

She must have expected the question but her eyes cut away, her mouth forming the start of a prevaricating _well…_

David begins pacing again, this time up and down. His steps slow as he lifts his face to the upstairs windows of the cottage, glinting with orange sunlight. The bathroom window is open and he can hear his children’s voices as they prepare for bath time. “Will he take care of the kids?”

She shakes her head. “Dave, we’re not going…”

He studies the grass underfoot, lets out a long breath. His brow crumples with pain when he tells her, “I think you should.”

Vicky says nothing.

He looks up at her, eyes pained but steadfast. “Take what you need from the house. Have the police escort you to the airport. Have your mum memorise your address but don’t write it down, okay?”

“But…” she blinks at him, “what about you?”

He runs a hand over his stubble. “I’ll find you when it’s safe.”

She seems rooted in place, unable to move or speak. Her brows furrow, she licks her lips. “Dave…”

“It’s for the best, Vic.” He moves closer, faces her but doesn’t touch her. “This is the safest thing for everyone.”

It takes a moment. But eventually she nods, slow and very faint. “I’ll call Tom.”

“Good.” His lips lift in a sad smile. He swallows and steps back. “Give me a call when it’s all settled. Just tell me….tell me the kids are enjoying their pizza.”

She still seems stunned, immovable. But he can hear his kids splashing about in the bath upstairs. He ducks his head and ascends the patio steps. He needs to say goodbye, tell them he loves them and will see them again as soon as he possibly can. Vicky’s voice stops him just as he’s about to enter the house.

“Dave. Have you…” she turns to him, fingers loosely knit, “got someone? To look out for you?”

David smiles tightly. “I’m workin’ on that.”

* * *

   
There’s a knock on her door.

Julia looks up from her book but doesn’t move. Because how on earth is there a knock on her door? No one knocks on her door. Ever. Members of her security team might give a quick tap before admitting her nurse or manicurist. But no one walks right up to the door of a dead woman and knocks with such conspicuous confidence. She rises, not quite knowing how to respond to such an unfamiliar situation. She supposes she should answer it. So she walks across the floor and opens the door.

David is arguing with Peter. Or Stuart. She gets those two muddled up. Whichever one he is, he’s barring David’s entry. At her appearance, the burly bodyguard stands to attention, mutters a succinct, “Ma’am?”

She glances at David. Then back at her security guard. “It’s alright. Let him in.”

Stuart or Peter doesn’t look pleased. But he lowers his arm and steps aside. David enters in jeans and a blue shirt. He heads straight for her couch with a fragrant plastic bag dangling from one hand and a red box tucked under the other arm.

“Fish and chips…” he states, placing the bag on the coffee table then glancing over at her, “extra lemon for the lady, of course. And—” He draws the red box out from under his arm and places it beside the bag, “chess.” With that, he takes a seat and starts unwrapping the food.

Julia stands in the vestibule, stunned and stationary. She wraps her long grey cardigan around her. She’s not prepared for this. She’s wearing flannel pants and loose slippers. Her face is bare and her hair uncurled. She stares at him in disbelief, hoping it might rattle his apparent ease. One of her stares used to be able to fell a man. But she must have lost her touch because David seems completely unaffected.

He glances up at her, licking lemon juice off his thumb. “I assume you have wine?”

She steps closer, eyes narrowed. “May I ask what the fuck you think you’re doing here?”

He waves a chip at her living area then eats it. “Thought you might be lonely.”

“So _you thought_ you’d just lead whoever’s after the two of us straight to my door?” she demands, tone sharp and head tilted.

He flicks her a look from beneath his brows. “They already know where you are, Julia. If you didn’t want me to know, you should've blindfolded me last time. Your location is the worst kept secret in Britain.”

She sniffs and straightens, watches him dust some salt off his hands. He opens the red box then moves towards her with a piece concealed in each hand. He extends his fists in invitation, eyes steady on hers. She looks down at his hands then back at his face. She makes him wait before tapping his left hand with one finger. David turns it and opens it, revealing the white queen.

“Your move first,” he murmurs, voice low.

“I will slay you,” she answers, voice lower.

He remains unaffected. “Don’t tell me you were on the chess team as well?”

Julia casts him a withering look as she turns away. “I’ll get the wine…”

_TBC..._


	9. Unity

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They’re on a time-clock, he knows that. He needs to keep her safe and for that he needs her trust. It’s more than that though. He wants her trust. Craves her respect. Longs for her love without knowing how to get it back.

He’s spent the past three nights with Julia. On the first, he brought fish and chips. On the second, he brought pizza. On the third, she was obviously expecting him because she cooked. A pasta dish with salmon and cream. The sort of one-pot meal a working woman could whip up in half an hour. It’s clearly not a strength of hers because the next night’s meal is similar, a tomatoey variation on a theme. Only the hue of the wine has changed.

As they sit and sip and eat, they play chess. They don’t talk about her near-death or his almost-betrayal. They don’t talk about their broken careers or broken marriages. They don’t talk about the convoluted past or the uncertain future. They just talk about chess.

As per her promise, Julia slays him swiftly and soundly nine rounds out of ten. Occasionally, he steals a win from her, but only when she makes an obvious error in judgement. He steals a few moves from her too, only to find that she’s three steps ahead of him anyway. On the board, as off the board, it’s difficult to detect a chink in her armour. But he’s not about to give up trying.

David sips his wine and lays his king on its side for the third time that evening. The victory barely registers with Julia. She blinks languidly, polishes off her Shiraz. He straightens on the couch, stretches his shoulders back and emits a tired groan.

“I should probably get going...”

Julia doesn’t reply. She just rises from the armchair opposite, collecting their spent plates.

“Unless,” David pauses, leaning forward and looking up at her, “you’d like me to stay.”

She straightens, considers him a moment with her circumspect gaze.

He’s left her alone for three nights, walked out her door without a word, without a fight. He’s noted the man stationed at her door or on the curb outside. From the wet, chilly street, he’s stared up at her windows, the muted light and drawn curtains. Then he’s wrapped his jacket about his body and walked slowly home. The lonely, windy walk only steeled his resolve to return the next night with added patience, extra fortitude, interminable constancy.

Her manner with him remains strained – hostile and suspicious. When she looks at him, it’s always with scrutiny. When she doesn’t, it’s almost worse. But they’re on a time-clock, he knows that. He needs to keep her safe and for that he needs her trust. It’s more than that though. He _wants_ her trust. Craves her respect. Longs for her love without knowing how to get it back. How to get them back to where they once were.

Julia shifts on her feet, a plate in each hand. “In what capacity,” she asks cagily, “would you stay?”

“Well…” he rocks back in his seat, glances at her well-guarded door, “your security team seems to be first rate. In fact, I’d probably be safer here than I would be going home.”

“So you’d be staying for your own protection,” she mutters, turning towards the kitchen, “not mine.”

He watches her walk away. Her stride is more assured now, her limp practically gone. She stands a little taller and looks a little stronger every time he sees her. When the door opened earlier that evening, it was almost like seeing the old Julia Montague. Except that her eyes didn’t soften when they landed on him, when he smiled. He couldn’t help smiling at the put-together ease of her. She’d made an effort – chosen her clothes, curled her hair, painted her face. Even her hermit-like space had been tidied for effect. Soft classical music had been playing in the background.

It’s stopped now. The flat is silent, tense with his far from innocuous invitation and her rather cynical response. Because she knows as well as he does that he wasn’t offering a night of undaunted protection. David rises and moves cautiously to the threshold of the kitchen. It was so easy the first time. Their coming together was so quick, so curious. Julia had approached him – one bold step at a time, with barely any discernible hesitation. Any resistance he put up had been minimal at best – a mental and moral imperative without physical or emotional backup. Every move she made, he watched and welcomed and willingly surrendered to.    

Probably because, from that first impromptu meal onwards, they had seemed like a foregone conclusion. She’d offered him that cuppa and their fate seemed set. He remembers her standing on the threshold of her kitchen in her stockinged feet, shoulder against the doorframe as she watched him ready their tea. He’d glanced over at her and their eyes had met – held. He’d seen the look in hers and known exactly what it meant. Julia had opened her mouth to say the words they both knew were true. Thick and tangible, they hung in the air around them, buoyed by the billowing steam of her kettle. _This_ was a terrible idea. _They_ were an utterly _terrible_ idea. She should deliver an aloof dismissal and he should exit her flat at a swift march. They should both retreat to their rightful places and ignore the fact that any professional boundary had been breached.

“David…” she began. But when she completed the sentence, it was only to tell him where he could find the sugar. If he wanted it, she added, eyes gleaming with warmth.

Now, her back is to him. Her spine is stiff as she drops their plates into the sink. The cutlery shimmies on the ceramic and the ceramic clangs against the steel. With jerky, disordered movements, Julia begins filling the sink with bowls and utensils and something thin almost shatters. Her shoulders ride up round her ears, her clothes tremble on her body. She twists the tap a little too hard and water gushes out. David doesn’t know if they are less of a terrible idea now or more. All he knows is that she wanted him once, trusted him once. She allowed him once to steal past her seemingly impervious defences. And in every line and movement of her body, he can see that she’s not now as impervious as she’d like to appear. For three full nights, he’s been searching for a chink, an opening. He’s been waiting for a moment of frailty without realising that simply his presence, along with a little red wine, was building inevitably towards one.

“Was it entirely a ruse?” she demands, rounding on him suddenly with dripping hands and flashing eyes. “Was _any_ of it real or did you just—” Julia turns back, twists the tap off, sticks her hands into the hot water before yanking them out again. She grabs a tea towel and pats her pink skin dry.

He frowns at her. “It wasn’t even partly a ruse. Not on my end.”

She scoffs slightly, mutters under her breath and continues playing with knives and forks instead of facing him. He watches her, wonders what he would meet if he were to move closer, reach out and touch her. He can’t tell whether she’s more liable to explode or crumble. It could go either way. But he’s willing to risk either reaction. Willing to risk anything to break this stalemate.

He takes a step, then another. He makes sure she can sense him coming. He lifts a hand to forestall any defensive reaction. Once in her orbit, he finds himself drawn in as much by ancient attraction as cautious concern. It’s as close as he’s stood to her in this new lifetime and it all feels so achingly familiar. The smell of her hair and the curve of her shoulder, the sound of her breath and the shape of her body. David stops in place, inches separating his front from her back. His hand extends, brushes over the back of hers. It’s still pink from the scorching water. Gently, slowly, he picks it up, lifts it, presses it to his cool cheek.

“If you knew…” he murmurs, eyes closing with the contact and voice going gravelly with truth, “how I wanted you.”

He shifts his face against her hand, pressing his lips to her palm for a long moment. He holds it in both of his, curls it tight against his body. Then he moves in closer so his chest grazes her side, lowers his mouth to her shoulder and kisses her there. Every move he makes is slow and savouring. He watches her out of half-closed eyes, feels her breath start to deepen and her spine start to relax. Her fingers move in his but not in a way that indicates escape.

His other hand reaches for her faraway hip, turning her into him. Hands joined over his heart, he slides his cheek along hers, plants a kiss at the opening of her ear. He whispers her name then ventures a little lower, nosing his way around her curls. When his lips touch the scarred flesh of her neck, Julia releases an involuntary gasp of surprise and longing and pleasure. She turns a little more into him, presses perceptively closer. One hand lifts slowly to his back. He feels her fingers press there, just lightly. Her other hand squirrels out of his to rest uncertainly on his shoulder. He kisses her neck then takes her earlobe into his mouth.

“ _How_ ,” he repeats, “I _wanted_ you.”

He doesn’t just mean before. He hopes she knows that, can hear it in his voice. He wanted her then – neither his deeds nor his desires were in any way false. They rose up from so deep within that they could barely be contained. She needs to know that. But she also needs to know just how much he wanted her after all hope was lost, after _she_ was lost to him. How intensely he ached for someone who no longer existed. How he dreamed of her phantom form, body and soul returning to her every single time he shut his eyes. David pulls back, takes her face in his hands and looks at her.

“And here you are,” he whispers – to himself as much as to her. “Here you are…”

He leans in, places a kiss on her cheekbone then one on her temple. His eyes close and his hands clutch her more desperately. Her hands tighten on him in response, sweeping down his back. His mouth opens to inhale her scent and his nose rummages through her hair. She lifts her face, closes her eyes and lets him kiss her brows and her cheeks and her chin.

“Please, Julia,” he mutters as he does, “Believe me…trust me...” And then, against her lips, “Forgive me. Please…forgive me.”

His eyes crack open to look at her. They’re nose to nose and breath to breath. Her eyes glitter with unshed tears. For a moment, neither of them moves, both await her answer. Then her hands drop from his back. They come up between their bodies. Her fingertips trace his jaw, spread to cup his face. Julia leans in with her eyes open and kisses him softly on the mouth. The kiss lingers but doesn’t deepen. She draws back slowly, eyes holding his steady. Then she takes his hand and begins to lead him from the kitchen. David’s feet don’t shift, his hand resists, tugging back on hers.

Julia pauses then smiles then speaks. “All is forgiven,” she says before leading him silently to her bed.  
  


* * *

  
She flicks on the lamp and sits on the edge of the bed. Hands reaching for his shirtfront, she draws him close, brings his lips down to meet hers. David holds her face in his hands and parts her lips with his. This kiss is deeper, more open and more intense. He breathes in through his nose, angles his head to one side and sucks her lower lip between his. Julia moans and blindly starts unbuttoning his shirt. His hands drop to her waist, pulling her top up over her head. Her hair settles back on her shoulders, her hands stroke up his arms.

He slips a hand between her hair and her neck, covering the scar there with his palm. Sliding it down, he traces the burnt skin down to her shoulder. Slipping her bra strap off, he moves in to press his lips to her body. To her shoulder, her clavicle, her chest. He pushes against her with his eager mouth and her body gives in, falling back on the bed. She scoots higher, laying her head on the pillow, and David crawls onto the bed, lying half beside, half on top of her. He draws the cup of her bra down, lowers his head and moans as he sucks on her nipple. He runs his hand over her ribcage as he does, one hand drifting down to unfasten her trousers.

Julia shifts on the bed, hips lifting to assist. She feels oddly calm about what he’s going to find. The scarring on her neck is nothing compared to the residual burn marks on her right hip. They’re pinker than his are – still healing, still smarting. But they’re similar in look and feel and expanse. And she can’t help thinking that now, they match. David drags her trousers down, moving slowly and examining every inch. He’s clocking each change, her ravaged curves and the random shrapnel marks. He runs a hand up her right leg, over the scarring that extends down her thigh. She can feel his touch through the damaged skin. It’s muted but there. Her eyes close at the incredible sensation of pleasure layered over the memory of pain. Tears prick her eyes, run down her cheeks when he leans down to kiss her, lick her, run his wet tongue over her. She whimpers and fists one hand in the bedlinen. Beneath her whimpers, she can hear him muttering a word into her mottled skin.

“Alive…” she makes out eventually. “Alive…” he mutters. “Alive…” over and over again.

She reaches down, runs a hand over his hair. “I guess I’m one of the lucky ones too.”

David laughs breathily into her skin. Then he crawls up her body, kissing up her middle, dragging his open mouth through the dip between her breasts. She parts her knees and he eases his body between them.

“Okay?” he whispers as his weight presses her into the mattress.

Her eyelids drift closed and open. She strokes his face and wraps her legs higher on him in response. It’s more than okay. It’s a delicious stretch. It’s what her hips have been working towards for months. They feel so happy to finally receive their just reward. They arch into him, into the pressure and warmth of him. David replies with a slow, sustained press of his hips that makes her gasp out loud. He captures her gasping lips, nips at them, sucks on one corner of her mouth. When her head drops to one side, he kisses down her neck, down to her other breast. He uncovers it and takes it in his mouth. He sucks it in and out, circles and flicks his tongue round and over the tip. He uses his teeth on her sensitive flesh as his hips circle against hers, building friction, building anticipation.

It feels so much like the first time they made love. It has the same heat and intimacy and restraint. It’s as curative as it is sensual, as sensual as it is lustful. There’s still an element of the unknown, an element of mystery. But the blind trust he inspired in her back then is no more. It’s been replaced by open eyes and a more informed faith. Her faith was shaken by his past actions and her ex-husband’s spiteful counsel. Without David at her side, it had been easier to believe the worst of him. But maintaining her scepticism has proved impossible in his presence. Faced with the reality of him, she cannot help but believe him, believe in him. Her belief is based on what she knows of him, rather than what she doesn’t or can’t or perhaps never will. It’s based on who he is in her presence, not out of it. Who he is now, not who he might have been in a past life. It’s based on how he touches her and looks at her. How speaks to her and says her name.

David says her name when she reaches between their straining bodies to free his cock. She runs her palm over the demin, cups him and strokes him. His eyes slip shut and his mouth goes slack. Just like the first time they made love, they’re both too eager for union to rid themselves of all their clothes. He still wears his open shirt, his jeans and socks. The lace of her bra is stretched under her breasts but the straps still encompass her body. David divests her lower body of underwear and spends a few moments running his fingers through her folds, parting her and pleasuring her. She unzips his jeans and draws him out of his briefs. At least this time, they won’t have to stop halfway through when she goes into shock.

She’d showered three times after Thornton Circus. Once to rid her body of all the blood and brains and sweat. A second time to rid her body of the residual blood and brains and sweat that she could’ve sworn she still felt on her skin. And the third time because she missed the heat of the water and couldn’t manage to keep warm. Only after her third shower did she discard her robe and dress. But later in the evening, when David started to undress her, her body began to give off vulnerable little shudders. He retrieved the thick terrycloth robe from the end of the bed and wordlessly wrapped her in it. Then he opened his mouth to suggest that they should probably stop before committing the sin they both seemed so determined to commit.

“Julia—”

It was the first time he’d called her by her first name and she loved the husky, lilty sound of it. But she hadn’t let him complete his sentence. She kissed him before he could get another word out. She pulled him on top of her, stole his warmth and his vigour and his sweet-smelling sweat. She knew they’d probably have regrets – both of them. But she had already decided that they could wait until later.

Now, she feels little regret. And no deficit of heat. Julia feels only the weight and warmth of him on top of her. She feels his mouth open on her neck as he slides inside her. She feels his hand slip into hers, grasp it tight as he starts to move slow within her. She feels her toes curl on his butt and her hips and knees fall wide open. She feels moans of pleasure rising up from deep within her chest. She feels herself tightening on him and around him and with him. She feels them surging towards release, seeking the same ecstatic height. She feels David’s pace increase, his brow furrow against her shoulder, his breath pant in her ear. She feels his face heat as her name is wrenched from his guts. And she feels the tendons in her neck stretch as her head is thrown back on the pillow and her orgasm leaks out of her throat.

_TBC..._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> LavenderIstheNewBlack has convinced me to add some notes to these last few chapters to explain some of the choices I am making with these two. So... 
> 
> \- This passage, from one of my tumblr posts, should explain the significance of the title of this chapter:
> 
> Julia does three things as she sits in the back of the car: she edits her speech, crossing out “unity” and replacing it with “leadership”, she slowly raises her eyes to the man who sits directly in front of her and then casts her reflective gaze at the empty seat beside her. These silent, telling acts all prefigure the offer she will make to her devoted PPO and clandestine lover. For, while “unity” on the surface means party unity, it can also mean the union of two opposites, an agreement between former enemies. It implies harmony, interconnectedness, togetherness. Even marriage. She crosses this word out to replace it with leadership – then seems to question this choice, not as enamoured with it as she has previously been. Here, Julia is choosing between her bid for the highest office in the land and her love for this brave new man in her life. 
> 
> \- You can read the full post here (sorry no hyperlinks possible in notes):  
> https://mindibindi.tumblr.com/post/181002851801/ok-so-i-really-wanna-ship-lavenderbudd-but-i
> 
> \- To understand why I believe "All is forgiven" is so significant to this pairing, you can go here:  
> https://mindibindi.tumblr.com/post/178662007781/otp-all-is-forgiven-let-me-tell-you-why-this-is 
> 
> \- The metaphor of chess should be obvious: politics and strategy, kings and queens, knights and pawns
> 
> \- The callbacks continue in this chapter. The first scene between David and Julia is an inversion of the scene in which they had dinner after Julia's broken date with Rob. This time, David is the one making the moves. The moment at the sink (like the moment during their argument when Julia shakily fixed herself a drink) is meant to echo that initial scene at the Blackwood in which they first touched, embraced and kissed.
> 
> \- I am also continuing with the flashbacks, filling in and around the edges of the history we already know. In this chapter, you will notice that David and Julia's memories are very similar, indicating that they are on the same page, they are now united in mind and spirit. These similarities between their sections have been present to differing degrees all the way through this story, with images, words or phrases repeated. This was particularly important in the first few chapters when they were parted as it indicated that the connection between them had not entirely been broken by her believing he was her enemy and him believing she was deceased. In this chapter, the recurring word/idea is presence. David's constant presence changes the dynamic between them, drawing them out of the past and into present, so that they can begin to contemplate an actual future.


	10. Rebirth

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Julia was his unrelenting, invisible rescuer. She was the force behind his strength and conviction and drive. She was his choice – now that he’d been given a second chance to make one.

He started making arrangements after their first night together. He asked around, got some names, paid extra for a rush job. A week later, he picks up his completed order before heading over to her flat. Her security team know him now, they admit him without argument. Julia is in the kitchen when he enters, making one of three meals in her less than extensive repertoire. She offers him a beer and, after taking a quick sip, David pulls out the brown paper package and slaps it on the kitchen counter.

“Happy birthday.”

Julia stops grating cheese and looks at him. “It’s not my birthday.”

“It is now.”

She eyes him as she wipes her hands on a tea towel then reaches for the package. Inside, she finds the passports of two brand new British citizens. She opens one, reads, “Catherine Walsh.” She thumbs over to the first page of the next, reads, “Matthew Walsh.”

David nods his head, takes a silent sip.

“So today’s my birthday,” she muses, examining the tiny typed details next to the photo of her face. “And _apparently_ I’m two years younger.” She looks up at him, eyes narrowing slightly. “Should I be offended by that?”

He blinks in innocence. “He shaved a couple of years off my age as well…” David shrugs and mumbles into the neck of his beer bottle, “This guy isn’t great with details.”

Her eyes widen in alarm. “Shouldn’t that be the first thing you look for in a counterfeiter?”

He pauses to swallow, emits a soft _ah_. “I’m told this guy’s the best.”

Julia hums dubiously and leans her hip against the counter. She examines the booklets, flicks through their pages, already stamped with past travel exploits. “So how’d you come up with the names?” she asks, gaze lifting to examine him.

His lips purse a moment. “Best to pick something generic.” 

She hums again and waits for more.

One shoulder lifts. “Thought maybe they’d get tired of looking by the time they got to the Ws.”

Her head tilts back, her eyes glint with concealed amusement.

“ _And_ ,” he adds, sucking in a breath, “they’ll not be looking for a married couple.” He tips his drink at the Walsh’s IDs. “Will they?”

Julia is silent a moment. The teasing glint vanishes from her eyes as they lower back to the phoney papers. “I’ve been married once before, David.” She places them on the counter, hands and voice wary. “It didn’t much suit me.”

David plucks up his new ID, rifles through it. “Well, I could pose as your baby brother if you’d prefer.”

She straightens, casts him a look as she turns to the bubbling pot on the stove. “This is serious.” Julia flicks off the knobs, leaving their dinner to cool and congeal. Then she faces him, arms folded and brow troubled. She keeps her gaze on the floor as she takes a breath, holds it then releases it in a reluctant sigh. “I’ve lived the life of a fugitive, David. You haven’t.”

“You lived that life alone, Julia.” He puts down his beer and stands a little taller. “Not with someone.”

Her head tilts sadly. “And what about your children?”

“They’re out of the country,” he tells her. “They’re safe. Once everyone is safe…and after some time has passed, I’ll get back in contact.”

She shakes her head and looks away, eyes landing and fixing on the twin passports. “You can’t want this for yourself…to leave everything behind…just like that…”

David steps closer, reaches for her elbow. He runs his hand up her arm to her shoulder then her neck. He draws her in, kisses her lightly on the lips. When he pulls back, she’s looking at him, her eyes round with worry and doubt.

“I want you right beside me,” he tells her, voice low, pointed, resolute. “That’s what I want.”

He kisses her again and feels her arms unfold and embrace him. She’s still uncertain – he can feel it in her body, in her breath and her kiss. But once – a lifetime ago it all seems now – she chose him. Despite everything, all the risks. So he feels fairly certain that, given time enough to think, Julia will choose him again.

As for him, his choice is already made. Nothing holds him here. His ex-wife and kids are settled in Australia with Tom. The last contact he had with Vicky, she casually dropped into the conversation that the kids were enjoying their pizza. That was it. Then her number disappeared off the grid. Her mum received a blank postcard of a kangaroo two days ago. When she showed it to him, David turned it over in his hands before throwing it on her fire to burn.

His own mum passed away shortly after that last fateful visit on the first of October. On that day, she’d barely been able to recognise him, let alone his children. A battle with Alzheimer’s had turned her into a shadow of the woman she once was. Mixed in with so many other tragedies, he’s yet to properly grieve her death, which was also part blessing. But with her, died his last connection to Scotland. It had once been home. England never was. All that remained for him here was a job that wasn’t ever a true vocation. It paid his bills, enabled him to support his family. But it was a job that now would forever be haunted by Julia Montague. His relationships with his colleagues had soured following their affair and the conspiracy encircling it. His friendships with his army buddies had similarly soured with time.

He’d fully expected his relationship with Julia to do the same. He’d not expected their nights together to offer any sort of longevity. It was part of what gave them their unbridled urgency and excitement. All along, he figured the end was nigh. So after waking in terror to find his hands at her throat, he sinkingly resigned himself to his fate. The look she gave him the following morning was the same look his commanding officers used to give him on his last tour, intimating in patronising tones that he should consider retiring to a civilian lifestyle. It was the same look Vicky had given him for months before finally ejecting him from their bed, their home and their future. It would have been so easy for Julia to likewise wash her hands of him. One word from her and he could be disappeared, losing his position and their fledging relationship in one swift diplomatic move. He’d primed himself for the blow all day. He’d anticipated demotion – not devotion.

When Julia doubled down on their relationship, David had been stunned speechless. He’d been scared out of skin and confused out of his mind. He hadn’t been ready to reciprocate, despite the undeniable swell of emotion in his chest. So he’d said nothing. Not a word in response. Everything he’d done after that moment had in part been a futile attempt to reclaim that last quiet moment with her, to belatedly show Julia the sort of honesty and bravery and devotion she’d shown him. Starting off as his sworn enemy, she’d become his secret ally, then his beneficent saviour. With a gun pressed to his head, her memory tormented him. But with a bomb belted to his chest, the memory of her drove him up and out and onward.

He remembers coming to in that dank basement, his head pounding, vision blurred and body lethargic with concussion. He glanced up at the grate above then down at the device that ensnared him. And for a split second he considered letting it win, letting it take him out for good. He’d already attempted suicide once in the name of Julia Montague. He should’ve known her spirit wouldn’t allow him to give in to an act of terror though, one that could take the lives of so many innocents as well as his own. Cutting through the rush of blood and adrenaline, he heard her voice in his head as though she was, if not right there with him, then somewhere close by, watching on.

_Get up, David. Get up._

His other hand curled around the trigger and, with weak knees and swimming vision, he rose slowly to his feet. Far more than just the muse in his pursuit for justice, Julia was his unrelenting, invisible rescuer. She was the force behind his strength and conviction and drive. She was his choice – now that he’d been given a second chance to make one. David hugs her closer, kisses her head and tells her that everything will be alright.          
         

* * *

  
David doesn’t show the next night. He doesn’t pick up when she calls his phone. And she knows deep in her gut that something is wrong. Somewhere, something has gone very, very wrong. All the plans they didn’t make are suddenly derailed. And all of his appeals regarding their safety come back to haunt her.

Julia enlists the help of her security service, takes on extra personnel, pays them all overtime. Women and men crowd her living room, spreading maps and making phone calls and chatting in hushed, ominous tones. She stands on the margins, eavesdropping and providing coffee. She feels fairly redundant, powerless for the second time in her adult life.

Desperate for something to do, she insists on riding along when they go to check out his flat. It seems like the logical first step, though they all seem fairly certain about what they’re going to find. Her Pole drives. Stuart or Peter sits beside him. In the backseat, she is crammed between two stout ladies with weapons attached to their hips. They check the area first, pick the lock with frightening efficiency. Then usher her quickly inside.

She’s never been to David’s home. It’s kind of like him and kind of not. It’s straightforward yet enigmatic. Spare yet solid. But not warm. Not assuring. As her security staff move purposefully through the space, each on their own private mission, Julia wanders aimlessly from room to room. She spies some drawings pinned to a wall, signed with big Es and wobbly Cs. She opens the fridge door on a half consumed six-pack of his favourite beer, some desiccated pizza and a lone, rotten orange. Her steps slow as she enters his bedroom. She surveys the space a moment then opens the wardrobe, his scent wafting up into her nostrils.

Reaching inside, she slides a shirt from its hanger and lifts it to her nose. Her eyes drift shut as she clutches it and inhales. She remembers that first thrilling yet utterly inconvenient pang of attraction when he stripped off and handed her the shirt off his back. As soon as she slipped it on, the warmth of his skin began to seep into hers. The smell of him stayed with her, on her clothes and on her body for the rest of the day. The next time she wore that suit, it was still there. Even after a trip to the dry-cleaners, it clung to the material. Wearing it was like walking around with a dirty little secret.

Initially, she put her reaction down to the fact that she was so perennially starved of sex. Of affection and intimacy and normal human contact. The contact of his shirt against her skin had not just felt illicit – it felt enveloping, sheltering, soothing. And the transfer of his scent onto her skin seemed to instantly instate a bond, binding them together with invisible, intractable thread.

The first time he touched her was shortly after. The runner had entered to take her into the studio, striding ahead while she and David lagged behind, semi-entranced. As they moved silently down the dark, blue-lit corridor, her new PPO had placed a hand on her back. Almost as if sealing the imprint he’d made on her body and psyche. It was only light – there then gone. A gentlemanly instinct rather than a professional performance of duty. She felt ridiculous when the fleeting touch made her heart pound and her cheeks flush. The runner glanced over his shoulder and smiled reassuringly at her, as if she was merely suffering from an understandable case of stagefright. Then he left them alone to deliver her aides to a position from which they could watch.

Julia adjusted his shirt, smoothing a hand down her front. She hadn’t even had time to glance in a mirror. “You were right,” she murmured as she watched Marr, “about the chest to waist ratio.”

David glanced at her from the corner of his eye. His gaze cut briefly down to his shirt on her body. “Aye, Ma’am. Looks fine on you.”

She licked her lips, met his gaze sidelong. “Well, I appreciate the last minute loan.”

He almost smiled, but directed his eyes front instead. “Happy to help, Ma’am.”

Rob and Chanel appeared, Andrew Marr mentioned her name and the runner whisked her away. She took her seat during her introduction, lifted her chin as a sound tech tampered with her mike. And every breath she took for every perfectly prepared answer she gave, she was aware of inhaling the warm zesty scent of David Budd.

Julia drops the shirt from her nose, turns and looks around his barren bedroom. One of the stout female officers appears and stands solidly on the threshold as she reports that, as expected, they’ve found nothing. If Budd was snatched, she says, it wasn’t from here. Julia nods and thanks her. The woman adds that the team back her flat have uncovered some more promising avenues of investigation. Julia nods again and dismisses her.

She turns back to the wardrobe, runs her eyes over its ordered contents. There’s a black tote sitting at the bottom, an old airline tag attached to one handle. As she draws a new breath, she feels something rise within her – some old sense of conviction, of determination, of resolve. She grabs the tote, rips the old tag off. She stuffs David’s shirt inside, adds another one. Adds some jeans and socks and underwear and a woollen jumper. She grabs some shoes and leaves the wardrobe doors hanging open as she exits. In the living room, she tugs the treasured childhood drawings off the wall. She folds them, tucks them inside the tote then marches out the door.

Back at her flat, she informs the bustling men and women that she wants to know everything they’re doing to locate David. They all pause to listen. Heads bob obediently as she tells them she wants to hear progress reports from team leaders every hour, on the hour. She leaves one woman with the task of transferring all her remaining assets into the names of Matthew and Catherine Walsh. Then, in the hush of her bedroom, she adds the Walsh’s passports to David’s tote. She packs her own bag with the few things she plans on taking with her before calling her Pole in to update her on those promising new leads. He tells her in blunt, broken English that David was slowly ridding his enemies of targets. He’d spirited his family away and now planned to run himself, with her. Aitkens’ organisation must have figured they’d better exact their revenge while they still had the opportunity.

“So they grab him,” he states, “from gym, after swim.”

She nods and gulps. “Any footage? Or witnesses? Anything to indicate where they might have taken him?”

“We work on it,” he assures her tersely.

Her momentum falters, her eyes drop to the carpet. She mutters a _thank you_ but it’s barely audible. She wanders to a window, gazes out at the grey street.

Her Pole shuffles to the door then turns back. “Don’t worry, Ms Montague. We find him. Is promise.”

Julia meets his eyes then smiles with more certainty. “Thank you, Mikolaj. I’m sure we will.”

_TBC..._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> \- So if you read the notes accompanying my last chapter, you will know that each installment of this story has so far had a recurring word or phrase or image linking Julia and David. This was especially important, to maintain the connection between them, in the beginning chapters when they were apart. Observant readers will notice that there is no such link in this chapter, that has been broken. You may notice also that, where their memories in the last chapter were very similar, in this chapter they are at opposite ends of the show's history. Whether this is significant or just me messing with you is up to you to decide at this point. Certainly, some kind of almost psychic link is still implied in the moment in which David hears Julia's voice in the basement, when he wakes up with the bomb strapped to his chest. Her words here, of course, echo her words in ch. 6 when they first catch sight of each other and he is hit by the motorbike. So this connection between them arguably transcends time, reverberating back through their shared history. There is also some dramatic irony in the fact that he thinks of her as watching on from somewhere close by because readers know that she very shortly would be watching the final events of the show play out. This too implies connection. On the other hand, I have called this chapter "Rebirth" and death and rebirth are mythologically linked so....I guess, you'll just have to stay tuned to see how this turns out.
> 
> \- There's a little bit of a double meaning with Julia's rebirth/new birthday. There's an obvious callback in David's last words to her (and if you didn't catch it then I'm disappointed in you as a shipper). Also: you may note that some lines from the previous chapter about David needing protection and being safer with Julia than out and about by himself were indicating the direction this chapter was going to take. 
> 
> \- Also in this chapter is the culmination of mini-narrative involving Julia and "her Pole" that reflects not just on her personal journey but on her political identity. As a politician, Julia was used to dealing with people in groups: they were Brits or Tories or terrorists or soldiers. Only with the events of the show, and esp. in her relationship with David, did a member of these larger groups become to her a unique and valuable human being. This homogenising of people is still sort of going on in her mind when she thinks of this man as "her Pole", reducing him to his national identity. This undoubtedly is meant to indicate that Julia is not really engaging with her surroundings because she is unhappy/frustrated with her life and still stuck in the past. But in this final exchange, where she finally calls him by his name (indeed, she gives it to him for the first time in the story) it becomes clear that she is moving into the present and really seeing the people around her. And she *does* in fact know who this man is, she *is* actually grateful for his effort, his protection and his comfort. Again, this reflects back on the show in that it implies that, however outwardly cool Julia may appear, there is a warm beating heart underneath.
> 
> \- Fun fact: I chose the name Mikolaj off a list of Polish names because it was so similar to Nikolaj (Coster-Waldau, my fave on "Game of Thrones"). Thanks all for reading, and please don't forget to feed the box. :D


	11. Epilogue

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A clean slate, a fresh start.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to all those who have taken the time to comment, particularly those who have supported this story consistently by putting something in the box with each update. You know who you are and so do I. xo

He wakes naked in white sheets. Sunlight streams through the open window and onto their bed. He lies on his stomach, having kicked the covers to the foot of the bed in his sleep. It’s too warm for blankets here. Rolling onto his front, David takes up both sides of the bed for one half-asleep, luxurious moment. He’s used to waking alone. Julia starts each day with a swim, returning to their flat cool, refreshed and energised. He can hear her splashing about below, can smell the coffee she started brewing before commencing her morning ritual. He rises with a groan, blinking his eyes awake as he slops to the window and props a hand against the frame.

Eight floors below, the pool has a chequerboard bottom over which her body seems to effortlessly glide. Her stroke is more relaxed now. It doesn’t have the ruthless drive, the furious containment that he observed that long ago night at The Blackwood. Each arm lifts, suspends leisurely in the air, droplets dripping from elegant fingertips, then plunges back into the water, propelling her forward through the clear blue. She’s not aiming for the end of the pool, not aspiring to hit a particular time. She’s just swimming, just moving, just basking in the cool water and her working muscles and the company of the palms that dip and sway above her. 

David yawns and runs a hand over his jaw. He pads to the bureau for some undies then into the bathroom to throw some water over his face. Everything about their flat is white and light and new – a clean slate, a fresh start. Even the water feels softer, simpler on his skin. His bruises have faded now, his bones healed. There’s still a jagged scar on his brow from where Aitkens’ crew beat him about the head. And two of his fingers no longer work as they did after being pinned and corkscrewed and broken. They were determined to play with him a little before killing him off. They must have figured that the crueller the torture, the more visible the mutilation to his dumped dead body, the greater the deterrent to any like-minded rogue coppers.

Still, their sadism bought him time. Just enough, as it turned out. Julia’s troops stormed in as they were holding a gun to his head, primed to deliver the fatal shot. To this day, he doesn’t recall much about it, or after it. He’d been battered and concussed. Sleep-deprived and starved. Mentally disoriented and clinging white-knuckled to his last, best hope – her. He remembers being bundled into the backseat of an SUV. His head landed on a soft lap. She stroked his bloodied hair, whispered to him as the car wove through London’s grey streets.

_Stay with me, love, it’s going to be alright..._

They drove to a motel just outside the airport. David doesn’t know how long they stayed there. Julia’s men remained stationed at the door. She brought him food and water, let him sleep, but not too much. A doctor looked him over, diagnosed his concussion, patched up his other injuries. At some point, he remembers her exiting the bathroom with her hair blonde and bobbed. Seeing that his eyes were open, she moved carefully across the carpet. His bloodshot eyes focused on her as she sat down on the edge of the bed.

“Hi,” she whispered, eyes wet.

“Hi,” he croaked, eyes drifting closed then open again. He looked up at her, smiled loopily. “Blonde,” he stated, lifting a hand to finger the cropped ends of her golden hair.

Julia caught his flailing hand in mid-air, held it steady in both of hers. “Yeah...”

His eyes closed over, his mind returning to the one thought that had sustained him during his captivity. “I love you…”

He heard Julia breathe. Heard her throat choke then clear. “I love you too.”

His eyes opened again. “Not just as a blonde,” he added, in quick clarification.

She laughed softly, “I’m glad,” then leaned down to kiss him. 

Once he was strong enough, she presented him with two airline tickets. Her man from Poland had advised her on some of the most fugitive friendly countries to which to flee. Julia chose Singapore because of its proximity to Australia and his kids. That night, Mikolaj dropped them at international departures with two bags and their counterfeit passports. Two hours later, they slipped undetected out of the country. David slept for most of the flight, his head on Julia’s shoulder or in her lap. She woke him at discreet intervals, although the worst of his concussion had passed. By the time they landed, he was wake, he was aware. He was cognisant enough to understand how lucky he’d gotten. How lucky he remained.

Julia, with the help of her security team, had made all the arrangements. She’d found them a flat in an ex-pat village, set them up with money and contacts and a believable backstory. They spent the first few days of their new life somewhat shell-shocked by their newfound freedom. They’d never been alone in a room together, with no one standing outside the door, no one liable to call one of them away at any moment. They’d never had complete privacy, complete autonomy. Hands joined, they explored their new home in relative silence. They made love in their new bed and slept in each other’s arms afterwards. With twin smiles and confident handshakes, they introduced themselves to their neighbours as Catherine and Matthew Walsh.

David heads for the kitchen in boxer briefs and bare feet. He pours himself a cup of coffee and sips the bitter brew. On the fridge, Julia has pinned Ella and Charlie’s drawings. And on a notepad below the intercom, she’s reminded him to Skype them later that evening. By the notepad is a mug of pencils and a photo frame. Both are tacky touristy pieces boasting famous images of the island. The framed photo was bought under duress as they wandered from local hotspot to local hotspot. The photographer insisted that they would want a lasting memory of the day on which it was taken. It was their second or third day in the country and they look simultaneously exhausted and relaxed. His chin is bearded, black hair flecked with silver, and his shirt is half-open, wrinkled and untucked. He has an arm slung around Julia’s bare shoulders. She wears a sundress, a pair of sunglasses pushed back into her blonde hair. Make-up-less, her face looks radiant and full and sun-kissed. Her freckles stand out as she squints into the sun and smiles for the camera.     

Hearing her step, David moves to the threshold of the kitchen with his mug. Their kitchen has no door. Their bedroom door is never closed. Julia doesn’t even lock the front door behind her as she enters the flat. She just swings it carelessly shut. Doors are much less important to them now.

“Good swim?” he asks from the threshold.

She hums and kicks off her sandals. “Good sleep?”

David nods and sips his coffee. He watches her move closer in her white one-piece and colourful sarong, watches her steal and take a sip of his coffee.

“Got much on today?” she murmurs, peering at him over the rim.                                

“Working tonight,” he answers. “You?”

She takes another sip then hands him back his coffee. “Clients all afternoon.”

She sighs as she says it but he knows she’s relieved to be working again. More than relieved. She’s thrilled to her intelligent, ambitious, driven core. Mikolaj’s contacts had come good. Julia’s past experience in law and government – along with Catherine’s impressive, fabricated CV – meant she could slip easily into a well-paid corporate position in the slick Singaporean business world. David was a more difficult case. He felt done with the people-minding business but unqualified for anything else. Julia suggested pursing a new qualification, launching a brand new career. She pointed out that thanks to their friendly neighbourhood counterfeiter he’d gained two extra years on his life. Then, reminding him of his childhood dream, she offered to pay his way through medical school. David doubted his capacity for intensive sitting and studying though.

It was Mikolaj who once again presented the solution. A former soldier himself, he’d once mentioned to his boss an organisation that helped him. One quick Google search put them in touch with an online organisation that provided ex-soldiers with counselling as well as job training. Ultimately, their aim was to prepare armed forces veterans to support fellow soldiers through the difficult transitional process of returning home and rebuilding their lives. Entering the program as a patient, David would in time become a mentor. With a new direction mapped out, he took on some work as a security guard at a local casino. Much of his free time was dedicated to pursuing by distance education a qualification as a support worker for retired combat personnel. Before beginning, he checked that the qualification was internationally recognised so that in the near future he and Julia might live and work in Australia.

For now, however, he loves their life. He loves its space and its simplicity and its seclusion. He loves mornings like this when they’re alone together with nowhere to be for hours. He sips his coffee as he looks at her, her hair ruffled dry and her sarong tied loosely about her hips. Her nose is pink where the morning sun has kissed her. Setting his mug aside, he moves closer and kisses it himself. Her hands lift to his body immediately, running up his chest to stroke his shoulders. She smiles as his mouth lowers to hers, capturing her lips in a lazy kiss. There’s one activity, no matter how much time together they now have, that they’re yet to tire of.

Without breaking their kiss, David unties her sarong, lets it drop to the floor. He strokes her hips, pulls them away from the wall and towards him instead. Her body feels cool and strong, the scent of chlorine sticking to her skin. He’s come to love the smell because he associates it with Julia in the morning. He kisses her harder, tugging at her lips with his. His hands slip beneath her swimming costume, palming and squeezing her arse. Julia moans and grabs his head, twining her tongue with his. Then she guides him down to her chest, stretching her neck in invitation. He kisses her there, runs his tongue over her clavicle. The lycra slaps the skin of her arse when one hand yanks out. He lifts it to her shoulder and pulls the strap down to expose her breast. Her nipple has inverted in the cool water of the pool so he sucks it warm, sticks his tongue in the divot and coaxes it back out again, tugging it into a ruddy, confident peak. Her arse gets another slap when his other hand extracts. Both hands free, he peels the top of her suit down and does the same to her other breast. She arches away from the threshold, strokes his head, lifts a thigh to caress his groin.

He hardens with the touch, torn between two options. Part of him wants to rip off her swimsuit and fuck her upright in the doorway. Another part of him wants to take her back into their bedroom and make long slow love to her until she begs and moans and sighs and explodes. In his experience, there’s nothing quite like making love with Julia Montague. But then there’s nothing quite like fucking her either. He loves both. He craves both. And lucky for him, he’s got time and energy for both. So he grabs the material of her swimsuit and yanks it down, ducking briefly then rising to his feet. Julia throws an arm around his neck and a leg around his hip, ready to be lifted and penetrated. David spreads his feet, pulls out his cock out then hoists her up and sinks in deep.

She adjusts herself against the door frame, wiggles a little on him. She lets out a breath, sinks a little deeper. He flexes his hips, feeling himself seated snugly in her warm, wet cunt. David holds her gaze, leans in to kiss her then thrusts once. Her eyes slip briefly shut, her breath comes out in a single sharp pant. He holds her gaze, thrusts again. Again, her eyes slip shut then open on his. Her breath pants, carrying a keening moan. Her chest starts to heave against his, his arms start to shake as they clasp her close. He pushes her up against the frame with his third thrust, clutching her arse and burying his face in her neck. Her fingernails scratch his scalp and his back as he thrusts a fourth time then doesn’t stop. He fucks her hard, rhythm insistent and slowly increasing. She liquefies about him, urges him on with her heels on his arse.

He keeps up the pace until he feels her come, clenching on him and quaking between his body and the unyielding wood. Then he pulls out and sets her down. She looks dazed and confused as he tucks his cock away, takes her hand and leads her down the corridor. He stops at the foot of the bed, moves back on it and pulls her down after him, on top of him. Julia smiles and straddles him, long legs curled either side of his hips. She runs her hands up his chest, leans down and kisses him. He threads his fingers into her damp hair, angles her head and slips his tongue inside her mouth. Their kiss is wet and indulgent and heady and changeable – slow and teasing one moment then hard and demanding the next. She digs her fingers into his chest hair, tugs at it. Rolls her hips over his, slathering his trapped erection with her generous juice.

She pulls her mouth away, nips at his jaw, his stubbly neck. Her hot mouth ventures downwards, sucks on his nipples, licks down his middle. She kisses a line across the top of his boxers then pulls them off his body. Re-straddling him, she positions his cock then envelopes it inside her. Her head lolls back as she does, her lips part on a sigh of satisfaction. David’s hands lift to her hips, his own arch beneath her on the bed. Julia circles her hips a little but otherwise doesn’t move, simply relishing the sensation of him filling her. He sits up from his prone position, eyes on her flushed face. He kisses her once lightly then moves his lips downwards. He kisses her neck as he squeezes her arse. He bites one nipple as he slides a hand over their joining and begins to stroke her spread folds, thumb her engorged clitoris.

Julia moans and arches her back, begging for more of the same. He moves to her other nipple, toys with it, flicks his tongue over it, bites it. He pulls it slowly between his teeth then lets it pop free, over and over again. Then he envelops her whole breast in his mouth and sucks it. Her hips keep up their slow, full circling, bucking occasionally against his fingertips. He applies a little more pressure with his thumb and hears her moans rise in pitch. He keeps it up but doesn’t increase it, refuses to give her more, even when her hips twitch restlessly and lose their rhythm. He releases her breast, goes back to the other one, goes back to torturing it with little nibbles and sucks. A hand on his head keeps him there, letting him know how vital that torture is to her impending orgasm. It builds slowly – because he won’t allow otherwise. He won’t thrust beneath her or speed up the circling of her clit or bite her nipples in any consistent pattern. It takes longer than her previous orgasm but he feels the moment frustrated striving turns into wondrous expectation. Her breasts start to tremble. Her mouth opens on a wide, soundless cry. Her spine stiffens for a protracted moment then buckles, throwing her forward. She clings to him, head on his shoulder and lips pressed to his skin. She emits a series of low moans as her hips pulse against his, clenching at his cock and making him grow harder.

When she’s done, he lifts her head off his shoulder, looks into her drowsy eyes and kisses her lax lips. “Love you,” he murmurs.

Julia smiles. “Love you,” she replies before dropping back on the bed and pulling him on top of her.

He’d have liked her to have been on top. He loved watching her move above him, loved laying back and gazing up at her eyes and her hair and her breasts and her lips and her hips. But she’s too spent and he’s too desperate. And there’s one advantage that this traditional position offers that he never gives up. It’s become a stock feature of their love-making – no less important now than during those first desperate, difficult months when sex acted as a balm to the constant tension, concealment and misunderstanding that separated them. So when David covers her body with his, he slips his hand into hers. Their fingers weave then tighten. He leans in to kiss her. Lines himself up and enters her.

He moves over her slowly, face buried in her neck. Her legs rise to encircle him, her mouth sucks on his ear. Julia whispers to him as he makes love to her, gives dirty love and lusty encouragement. Her free arm wraps round his head and her cunt caresses his entire length at once. Her hand never leaves his, his hand never pulls out of hers. The whole time they make love, his palm kisses hers, her fingers grip his. The bands on their fourth fingers click against each other. David presses her hand into the mattress as he pushes their bodies towards the ultimate release. Only after he comes, after their cries subside and their heartbeats slow, does his hold on her hand ease. And even then, he doesn’t let go.

_END._

_Notes:_

  * White sheets: so this has a whiff of the morning after scene that begins ep. 3 but it also has a whiff of heaven, which was apparently one of the options for David at the end of the last chapter. This was never actually going to happen but still I wanted to give a fleeting impression of David in heaven, without Julia. More importantly though, this beginning is meant to imitate the beginning/prologue of this fic in that, as with Julia, we don’t quite know where he is, how much time has passed or how he survived. But unlike the opening with Julia, in which everything is dark and dated and oppressive, everything in David’s fugitive lifestyle is light and airy, easy and happy.
  * The symbolism/significance of Julia gliding over the top of the chequerboard pool should be obvious (fun fact: based on a real pool in Singapore).
  * A clean slate, a fresh start: a callback to David’s introduction/first section, him wanting to escape his sad lot in life. The moment in which Julia comforts David is another callback, this time to the flashback in ch. 5. The words she says to him here are the same as the words he said to her in the back of the ambulance, after the blast. This moment is, in turn, a callback to him comforting her in the car during the Thornton Circus attack. 
  * Julia’s hair: along with replacing her black swimsuit with a white one, this is part of the general lightening of this chapter, taking these two out of the dark and into the light. [Here](http://www.imagebam.com/image/a3f299538745465) is a reference on what I imagine Julia’s new hair to look like.
  * Singapore: I’m not sure if folks are going to like this ending so I wanted to explain my thinking. When people started asking me to write for this pairing, I’d already read a bit of the fanfic out there and thought there were certain scenarios that readers wanted to see that had already been nicely covered. If I was going to put time and effort into writing something, I didn’t want to repeat any beats unnecessarily. I wanted to do something different. Obviously Julia had to be alive and in hiding but I didn’t want to send her to Greece or France or Scotland. That’s why there’s this casual reveal tucked into ch. 4 that she is in fact in London. She hasn’t gone anywhere. She’s right under everyone’s noses, including David’s. It’s her injury, her depression and her supposed death that is protecting her from being exposed. Not only does this work contrary to expectation, it heightens the danger she’s in since it makes her much more accessible. Also heightened is the reason for her flight. By revealing to her David’s supposed complicity in her attempted destruction, she’s not just running for her life from Aitkens etc but from him as well. He’s not only impacted by her disappearance, he’s the main reason for it.  
  
More than just avoiding what had been done, I also wanted to imitate the show by setting up a problem that had an implied solution built into the title then refusing to satisfy the audience’s expectation of that solution. With “Bodyguard” the implied problem is that there is someone who needs protection and the implied solution is that the bodyguard will protect this person from harm. As we all know, Jed overturned this expectation by having the bodyguard of the title fail to perform his narratorially defined duty. In much the same way, I wanted to set up a problem then not give the implied solution. The problem of “Fugitive” is Julia’s fugitive state and the implied solution is to somehow bring her out of that. Again, this was never my intention. Rather, I wanted lean into the problem and send her deeper into hiding, _and_ David too. Rather than return to the status quo, I wanted to create a whole new reality for them. The “problem” of the story was compounded by Julia’s deep unhappiness as a fugitive. But the actual solution was simply to imagine a different state of fugitivity (not a word), one _with_ David that was happy and satisfying for them both. Because, for me, all that matters is that they’re together. I don’t care about the kids or the Prime Ministership or anything else. Just them.  
  
So this is where I think some people may be unhappy. Because I see a lot of peeps wanting Julia as PM -- again, not something I was ever going to do. I definitely wanted to give Julia work again, I think she needs that. But there are a couple of reasons I didn’t make her leader of the country. First of all, for me, Julia made her decision in that last exchange with David. She chose him and she knew then exactly what it might cost her. Because, however much I would love to believe different (and someday we may live in a fairer world), right now, with the scrutiny that female politicians face, in my mind there is NO WAY that Julia was EVER going to be able to have both David and the top job. Never gonna happen. And she knew it too. That’s what made her choice so extraordinary. With the tragedy of her demise, I feel there is also a slight tendency to glorify Julia and overlook her more problematic qualities. I do think David was making her into a better/kinder politician and could have continued to do so (if the the world we lived in allowed him to partner her while she served her country in this way). Personally, however, I am deeply disturbed by the almost global swing towards conservativism/the right. For me, Julia Montague was a politician who _needed_ to have some checks placed on her. Making her PM was, in my mind, neither a realistic nor an entirely responsible choice.
  * The photo: echoes/replaces the photo Julia mentions in the prologue. The picture of David with Andy, described in some detail, is the main piece of evidence that sent her into hiding and into doubt. These images book-end the piece: the photo in the epilogue is happy and relaxed, where the one in the prologue was alarming and shattering to their relationship. In the first, David has his arm slung around Andy’s shoulder. Here, his arm is around Julia. This image of her, healthy and happy, also contrasts with the nearly unrecognisable image David first received of her, sitting on the park bench, all hunched and hidden and unhappy.
  * Doors: objects of concealment/revealment (also not a word), they played a big part in their Blackwood trysts
  * Threshold spaces: there is a feeling in this chapter of looking forward to the future. I’ve left David and Julia in a place that’s comfortable but not entirely complete. In keeping with my desire to 1, echo the beginning and 2, not solve the “problem” of the title, they remain in a sort of limbo-land. This is how Julia thinks of her state in the prologue. David too, is in a sort of limbo-land in the beginning, emotionally speaking. He wants to let go and also doesn’t, knows he needs to but can’t quite make himself. Both are on the threshold between an old life and a new life. Together, in this final chapter, they are also on the threshold between a new life and an old life. Thus the symbolism of them making love on the threshold. Their old life lingers in memory but their new life in Australia with David’s kids hasn’t begun yet. They’re at an in-between stage where they can just recover and reconnect and recalibrate their life course, now that they are, and will be from now on, together.
  * Hands: so after wrapping up all the loose ends, I wanted to end on an image that encapsulated this idea of togetherness. Them clasping hands as they make love is, of course, lifted directly from the series and continued a couple of times in this fic. I think it is so damn romantic and intimate and sexy. And the last line is really meant to sort of heal the pain of their mental estrangement in the series and their physical estrangement in this story. It’s meant to imply that now, having found her again, David never intends to let go. They’re together now, this time, for good.



**Notes for the Chapter:**

> were too long so I put 'em up there ^^^ :D


End file.
